Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the hair.

GOLD COAST.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir ARNOLD WILSON: On behalf of the Aborigines Protection Society of the Gold Coast, I beg to present through you to this honourable House a petition, duly signed by two delegates purporting to represent the great majority of chiefs of that coast, and praying that this honourable House maybe pleased to institute, in such manner as they may see fit, an inquiry into the nature of the relations which have existed since 1931, and further into the nature and the merits of the Gold Coast Order in Council of October, 1925, to which they take exception.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Metropolitan Water Board Bill, Read the Third time, andpassed.

Frimley and Farnborough District Water Bill [Lords],

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

Marriages Provisional Order Bill,

Ministry of Health Provisional Order (East Surrey Water)Bill,

Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Harpenden Water)Bill,

Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Monks and Princes Risborough Water) Bill,

Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Rainham Water) Bill,

Ministry of Health Provisional Order (South Oxfordshire Water)Bill,

Read a Second time, and committed.

Oral Answers to Questions — MEMEL.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether a reply has yet been received
from the Lithuanian Government to the note addressed to them by the Governments of Great Britain, France, and Italy on Good Friday; if so, whether he will inform the House as to the nature of such reply; and whether, in the view of His Majesty's Government, it offers a satisfactory anticipation that justice will be granted to the people of Memel?

The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS(Sir John Simon): As stated in answer to the hon. Member for Westhoughton(Mr. Rhys Davies) on 13th May, the reply of the Lithuanian Government to the recent joint com munication by His Majesty's Government and the French and Italian Governments has been received. His Majesty's Government do not regard is as a satisfactory answer to the demand of the signatory Powers for a restoration of normal government in the Memel territory, and are approaching the French and Italian Governments with a view to deciding on such further action as may seem indicated.

Oral Answers to Questions — AIR ARMAMENTS (LIMITATION).

Mr. MANDER: 2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Anglo-French proposals of the London Agreement of 2nd February are still considered as being interdependent, indivisible, and to be negotiated at the same time?

Sir J. SIMON: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for West Leeds (Mr. V. Adams) on this subject on Monday last.

Mr. MANDER: Do I understand that there has been no change in policy?

Sir J. SIMON: There has been no change since last Monday.

Mr. MANDER: Has there been a change since 2nd October?

Mr. VYVYAN ADAMS: 9.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what progress has been made towards negotiating a limitation of air armaments between the five Powers mentioned in the London communique; and whether, to promote European security, His Majesty's Government will explore anew the possibility of merging national air
forces in an international air police force under the control of the League of Nations?

Sir J. SIMON: As regards the first part of the question, I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to the question he asked on this subject two days ago. As regards the second part, I have nothing to add to the reply which the Prime Minister gave to the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) on 27th March.

Mr. ADAMS: Arising out of the first part of the question, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether His Majesty's Government will inform the House and the public at the earliest opportunity if any progress is made in these vital matters; and, as to the second part of the question, may I ask whether the Government have any alternative long-range proposals for the control of civil aviation

Sir J. SIMON: As regards the first part of the supplementary question, most certainly. The matter is being very actively pursued. The only qualification would be, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, that it is not always desirable in the course of discussion to make a public statement before the negotiations are completed. As regards the question of internationalisation of civil aviation, that I think was the subject of the answer to which I had referred, and which was given by the Prime Minister.

Lieut.-Colonel AGNEW: Will the negotiations proceed at all stages on the basis of equality of?

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to give a specific reply and to say exactly what is the Government's position in regard to the internationalisation of civil aviation

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better address that question to the appropriate Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions — CONSULAR SERVICE (BUDAPEST).

Mr. MANDER: 3.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will state the present position at the British consulate at Budapest?

Sir J. SIMON: In January, following a reorganisation of the work of the post at Budapest, the salaried vice-consulate was suppressed, and the consular work is now performed under the supervision of the commercial secretary. I am satisfied that this arrangement, which has resulted in greater efficiency and a considerable saving in the cost of running the post, is in the public interest.

Oral Answers to Questions — ITALY AND ABYSSINIA.

Mr. V. ADAMS: 4.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can indicate the volume of the flow, during the past two months, of Italian troops into territory adjacent to Abyssinia; whether the acceptance of the League process of conciliation has served to stem that flow; and, if not, whether he will propose that representations be made by the League to the Italian Government urging them to withhold further reinforcements as evidence of their good faith?

The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Mr. Eden): My right hon. Friend has asked me to reply. I have no official information which would enable meto answer the first or second part of this question. As regards the third part., I would remind my hon. Friend that the recent resolution of the Council of the League, which was adopted unanimously, embodied the effort of the whole Council to ensure that the matters in difference should not be settled by force. The question of the extent to which the strength of Colonial garrisons should be reinforced for de fensive purposes is a different matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — LEAGUE OF NATIONS UNION (COVENANT)

Mr. MANDER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what proposals have been brought before the committee set up by the Council of the League of Nations to propose measures rendering the covenant more effective in the organisation of collective security, and to define economic and financial measures applicable in the event of a unilateral repudiation of treaty obligations calculated to endanger peace; who the British representative is; whether the British Government intend themselves to bring forward proposals; and when the next meeting will be held?

Sir J. SIMON: The French Government submitted a memorandum to this Committee, which held its first meeting on 24th May and which is still in session. The representative acting for His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom is Mr. R. G. Hawtrey, of the Treasury. The 'Committee yesterday adopted a proposal by the United Kingdom representative that, in order to further the progress of its work, certain legal issues should be submitted to a sub-committee of jurists, and that another sub-committee should be set up to study a number of economic and financial questions with the assistance of the economic, financial and transit sections of the League Secretariat.

Mr. MANDER: Can the right hon. Gentleman say if the British Government are proposing to put forward any proposals of their own?

Sir J. SIMON: We have given a lead by what His Majesty's Government have already suggested. The matter is a very serious one and, of course, has to be examined step by step most carefully.

Oral Answers to Questions — TANGIER.

Sir JOHN POWER: 6.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that, unless a demand for the revision of the statute of the Tangier zone is made prior to 24th November of this year, the existing statute is automatically renewed for a further period of 12 years; and whether, as His Majesty's Government do not regard the present position as satisfactory, it is his intention to give due notice of a demand for revision?

Sir J. SIMON: The period for giving notice of revision expires on 14th November next, and I am aware of the position if such notice is not given. As regards the second part of my hon. Friend's question, His Majesty's Government will re serve their decision as to the most appropriate procedure to be adopted, until the views of the other Powers concerned have been received and considered.

Captain PETER MACDONALD: Can the right hon. Gentleman accept the suggestion in the second part of the question that His Majesty's Government consider the present situation to be unsatisfactory?

Sir J. SIMON: My hon. and gallant Friend may recall that, in answer to the question a few days ago, I explained—and I am glad to repeat it—that the view we take is that it is desirable to strengthen the international regime by seeking improvements in the administration of the Statute and more particularly in its financial and judicial sphere.

Sir J. POWER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the city of Tangier cannot balance its budget, and that the annuities payable on the port loans can only be met with the assistance of voluntary grants made by the French and Spanish zones in Morocco, and which may be with drawn at any moment; and whether it is intended, in the event of the discontinuance of these grants, to permit the financial control of the port to fall into the hands of the French concessionaires?

Sir J. SIMON: I am aware that the Tangier budget, including the service of the port loans, has been balanced in recent years with the aid of subsidies from the French and Spanish zones. In the event of a default in the service of the port loans, the position is governed by Article 40of the Convention of 1923, relating to the organisation of the Statute of the Tangier zone, which provides that the Shereefian Government will resume the sole financial control of the port concession. His Majesty's Government pro pose to consult with the other Powers concerned regarding the means for ensuring the financial stability of the zones as a whole.

Sir J. POWER: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is satisfied that the situation in Tangier is consistent with the principle of internationalisation and in accord with the avowed British policy of securing the free passage of the Straits of Gibraltar

Sir J. SIMON: Yes, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY.

DOCKYARD EMPLOYÉS, GIBRALTAR.

Mr. NEIL MACLEAN: 11.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether questions of wages and conditions of employment affecting employés in Gibraltar, other than those engaged from this
country, come within the scope of existing Whitley Council machinery; and, if not, whether he will favourably consider an application that all such matters which cannot be satisfactorily settled by negotiations between the representatives of his Department and the accredited representatives of employés shall be referred to the Shipbuilding Trades Joint Council for Government employés?

>The CIVIL LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Captain Euan Wallace): The Shipbuilding Trade Joint Council for Government employés deals with the wages and certain working conditions of Admiralty workpeople employed in this country or sent from this country to naval establishments abroad under a contract of service. The wages and working conditions of locally entered workpeople at naval establishments abroad, such as Gibraltar, Malta, Bermuda, Singapore, Hong Kong and Simonstown, must be based largely on local conditions of employment, and not on those prevailing in the shipbuilding industry in Great Britain, with which all members of the Council are familiar. The matters referred to in the question do not, therefore, come within the scope of the Whitley Council machinery, and I regret that it would not be practicable to make the change proposed.

Mr. MACLEAN: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman be good enough to reply to the last part of the question, as to whether such matters as cannot be satisfactorily settled between the representative of his Department and the accredited representatives of employés will be referred to the Shipbuilding Trades Joint Council for Government employés?

Captain WALLACE: I have said that I regret that that would not be practicable.

Mr. MACLEAN: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman explain why it would not be practicable that these matters should be discussed by the Committee suggested in the question?

Captain WALLACE: The Committee is a Committee of the trades unions, which does not necessarily know anything about the local conditions.

Mr. MACLEAN: Is it not the case that these men are members of British trade unions, and therefore would have repre-
sentatives with all the facts in their possession which they could lay before the Committee?

Captain WALLACE: I would not like to answer that question offhand, but I think not.

Mr. MACLEAN: rose—

Mr. SPEAKER: This is becoming a debate.

DEPUTY ENGINEER-IN-CHIEF.

Mr. DOBBIE: 12.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty when Engineer Rear-Admiral R. Beeman was made deputy engineer-in-chief to the Admiralty, and for what period this appointment was made; what were the circumstances of his resignation; and upon what representations did the Admiralty consent to accept his resignation?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Lord Stanley): Engineer Rear-Admiral R. Beeman was appointed deputy engineer-in-chief on 1st December, 1932. There is no fixed period for this appointment, which is at their Lordships' pleasure; its duration is usually about two years. This period having now expired, Engineer Rear-Admiral Beeman was due for relief during the course of the year, and would have retired in order to facilitate the promotion of junior officers. In view of his being offered the post of engineer manager at Messrs. Vickers-Armstrongs' Barrow works, arrangements were made for this relief to be carried out forth with.

CONTRACTORS, ARBROATH (WAGES).

Mr. T. WILLIAMS (for Mr. DAVID WILLIAMS): 10.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that Messrs. James Keith and Blackman, Limited, an engineering firm in Arbroath, Scotland, are contractors to the Admiralty; that they are not observing the fair wages clause in such contracts; and that the district rate agreed between the Dundee Engineering Association for boilermakers and light-platers is 1s. 4d. per hour, whereas the above firm are paying rates as low as 8d. per hour and in no case higher than 1s. 3d. for one man only; and whether he will make inquiries with a view to bringing them into line with other con tractors in the district, so as to comply with the terms of Government contracts?

Lord STANLEY: The firm named are contractors to the Admiralty. This is the first intimation of any complaint that they are not observing the fair wages clause in Admiralty contracts, and steps are already being taken to investigate the matter.

Mr. THORNE: Is the Noble Lord not aware that all these contractors who are contracting for Government work contract according to the fair wages clause, and is he not aware that every time they get out of paying these rates of pay it is more profit to the Government? Should not the Department see that proper rates are paid?

Lord STANLEY: I understand that in all oases the fair wages clause is scrupulously observed.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE.

AUXILIARY SQUADRONS..

Mr. EVERARD: 13.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air in what counties the three additional auxiliary air squadrons will be formed?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Sir Philip Sassoon): This matter is at present under consideration. A public announcement will be made as soon as a decision has been reached.

SHORT-SERVICE OFFICERS.

Mr. EVERARD: 14.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether any new arrangements are being made to enable selected short-service officers of the Foyal Air Force to have their temporary commissions made permanent?

Sir P. SASSOON: The present procedure already provides for a limited number of officers holding short-service commissions to be selected for permanent commissions, and this procedure is considered to be adequate to meet the needs of the case.

AERODROMES (LANCASHIRE).

Mr. CHORLTON: 17.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether it is proposed to establish any service aerodromes in Lancashire under the new scheme; and, if so, how many

Sir P. SASSOON: I do not at present see any prospect of establishing an aerodrome for a regular squadron in
Lancashire. As regards Auxiliary Air Force squadrons, I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to-day to my hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Mr. Everard)

Viscountess ASTOR: Is not Devonshire the best situation for an aerodrome, seeing that in Devonshire there is more room for expansion?

CONSTRUCTION PROFITS.

Mr. V. ADAMS: 19.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he will now specify the means whereby, during the prospective period of abnormal construction of war aeroplanes, it is hoped to obviate profiteering by armament interests?

Sir P. SASSOON: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays) on Monday.

Mr. MANDER: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that shares are being hawked round, with promise's of enormous profits in a few months' time; and ought not some action to be taken in this regard?

Sir P. SASSOON: I do not see what action the Air Ministry can take with the Stock Exchange.

Oral Answers to Questions — AVIATION.

EUROPEAN AIR ROUTES.

Mr. SIMMONDS: 15.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether His Majesty's Government approve the in auguration of new European air routes by Imperial Airways, Limited, while, on the plea of shortage of aircraft, they omit to complete the air link on the Empire routes between Paris and Brindisi?

Sir P. SASSOON: The loads to be carried on the main Empire air routes are, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, considerably greater than those on the new London-Budapest service, which he presumably has in mind. The latter ser vice can thus be operated by aircraft of a much smaller type than are required for the complete elimination of the Paris-Brindisi train journey

Mr. SIMMONDS: It is not a, fact that more passengers and mails could be carried between Paris and Brindisi if
those aircraft which are now being 'used for the service to Budapest were utilised on that route?

Sir P. SASSOON: If the smaller air craft were transferred from the Budapest service, it would not be an economic proposition, as the weight of mails to be carried is so very much heavier.

EMPIRE ROUTES (IMPERIAL AIRWAYS, LIMITED).

Mr. SIMMONDS: 16.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air for what period of years the Government has committed itself to Imperial Airways, Limited, in connection with the new Empire developments?

Sir P. SASSOON: The details of the scheme are still under consideration, and no agreement with Imperial Airways has yet been executed.

Mr. SIMMONDS: Can the Under-Secretary assure the House that, in connection with this agreement, the Government will not continue to undertake to Imperial Airways that they will not assist any other company if it should be desirable to do so during the currency of the agreement

Sir P. SASSOON: I do not think I can say any more.

Mr. PERKINS: Will the agreement be submitted to the House?

Sir P. SASSOON: I should require notice of that question.

GLIDING.

Commander OLIVER LOCKER-LAMPSON: 18.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he is aware that tenants or proprietors of shooting rights can take legal action against gliding aircraft for disturbance, and that grouse, in particular, must not be so disturbed; and, as machines which are noiseless are less detrimental than those with engines, whether he will take steps to amend the law to give gliding aircraft immunity from prosecution for disturbance of game?

Sir P. SASSOON: I am aware that in a recent law case the tenant of the shooting rights over certain land obtained an injunction against the letting of the land for gliding on the ground of the
disturbance of game. As further or other legal action is possible, I would prefer not to answer the second part of my hon. and gallant Friend's question, but I can assure him that the position is being care fully watched at the Air Ministry.

Wing-Commander JAMES: Will my hon. Friend take cognisance of the fact that both the implications contained in the question are wrong?

Commander LOCKER-LAMPSON: Is it worth while for the Government to spend £5,000 a year on gliding if a man can stop gliding merely in order to preserve grouse?

Mr. SPEAKER: That is a matter of opinion.

BOOKING FACILITIES.

Mr. DICKIE: 34.
asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the necessity that railway companies should move with the times, and also in order to assist the future of civil aviation, he will re consider the decision of his predecessor and intervene with the railway companies, with a view to ensuring that equal booking facilities are made available to the public for air travel by all British air lines at all recognised agencies?

The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Hore-Belisha): This would appear to be a domestic matter concerning the railway companies and their agents.

Mr. DICKIE: If the Minister really has no power to intervene, will he not represent to the railway companies that this dog-in-the-manger policy is quite out of keeping with the spirit of the times and urge them to think a little more of the interests of civil aviation and of the public in general.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I cannot quite appreciate what my hon. Friend has in mind. Of course, it is desirable to en courage civil aviation, but these are the agents of the railway companies, appointed by the railway companies to sell railway tickets, and it would be out of the question to bring pressure to bear upon the railway companies to sell aero plane tickets or motor omnibus tickets which are in competition with their own services, just as it would be out of the question to require aviation companies to sell railway tickets in competition with their services.

Mr. DICKIE: Is it not a fact that many of these agents are general agents and that this embargo is placed upon them also?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: There is no embargo. It is a matter of commercial agreement. If an agent wishes to enter into an agreement with a railway company to serve the interests of the railway company, it is a matter over which neither this House nor I could have any control nor one in which we could properly interfere.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT.

ROAD AND BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION, SCOTLAND (LABOUR COSTS).

Mr. BURNETT: asked the Minister of Transport what steps are taken to en sure that all Scottish local authorities will systematically compare their direct labour unit costs with those prices submitted by contractors in open competition, and redress the situation when a comparison reveals any waste?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I have no powers which would enable me to require local authorities to make the comparison referred to by my hon. Friend, but, where-ever it appears that, in connection with works carried out under grants from the Road Fund, direct labour costs are unduly high, investigations are made by officers of my Department, and, where necessary, the matter is taken up with the authorities concerned.

Mr. BURNETT: asked the Minister of Transport whether in view of the com plaints as to waste and extravagance in road and bridge administration made against certain local authorities, he will issue a reminder of his recommendations contained in Section 21 of Circular No. 3(Roads), issued on 26th May, 1933, to Scottish local authorities

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: No such complaints have reached me, but, if my hon. Friend will send me particulars, I will cause immediate inquiries to be instituted.

Mr. BURNETT: Were not complaints sent to the Ministry of Transport not very long ago on certain points?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I think recall that my hon. Friend submitted a complaint from a contractor as to the
competition to which he was subjected, but that the letter was not signed. I think my hon. Friend was informed that, if the contractor would append his name to the letter, I would take the matter up.

LONDON RAILWAYS (ADVERTISEMENTS).

Mr. WEST: 23.
asked the Minister of Transport whether the policy of the London Transport Board respecting the display of political advertisements on their railways has been recently changed and, if so, why?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I am informed that the answer is in the negative.

Mr. WEST: Is the Minister aware that the objection taken is not to misleading advertisements, but to the fact that on previous occasions advertisements have been refused by the Transport Board on account of their political nature?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I am not aware of that fact. If the hon. Member will let me have particulars, I will take the matter up and see if I can assist him. I am informed, however, that advertisements are accepted on a purely commercial basis, and are only rejected if they offend against the public taste?

Mr. WEST: If that really be the principle governing the acceptance of advertisements by the London Passenger Trans port Board, how does the Minister account for the acceptance of the advertisements on "What the National Government has done"?

Viscountess ASTOR: Will the Government carry out that policy as regards all interests?

ROAD ACCIDENTS.

Mr. WEST: 24.
asked the Minister of Transport how many persons have been killed in collision with the London Trans port Board's trolley omnibuses during the last two years, and how many were killed by the tramcars displaced by them in the two years preceding conversion

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I will send the hon. Gentleman a copy of a letter I have received from the London Passenger Transport Board giving full information. The number of accidents involving personal injury per 100,000 car miles run is 6.09 in the case of trolley vehicles and 9.3 in the case of tramcars. These figures, which show that tramcars are involved
in 50 per cent. more accidents involving personal injury than trolley vehicles, represent, in the opinion of the board, the best method of arriving at the relative accident liability of the two forms of transport.

Mr. EDWARD STRAUSS: 32.
asked the Minister of Transport whether he has any information tending to indicate whether pedestrian crossing-places have contributed towards a reduction of street accidents in London?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: During the months of March and April of this year the number of pedestrians killed and injured in the Metropolitan Police District was 17.6 per cent. less than the number in the corresponding months of last year before pedestrian crossings were established. A special observation has been made on four, main roads leading from Central London to the boundary of the County of London. These roads were the scene of particularly heavy pedestrian casualties but they have now been adequately equipped with pedestrian crossings and the observation disclosed that there has been a reduction in the number of pedestrian skilled and injured on theme amounting to no less than 44 percent. in the above-mentioned periods. While of course there are many factors involved, the information in my Department indicates that pedestrian crossings have contributed substantially towards the reduction of accidents in London.

Sir PERCY HARRIS: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether there have been any accidents, and, if so, how many at the actual crossing-places themselves?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I think that they are an infinitesimal proportion of the whole of the accidents, and naturally I have not the figures here.

RIVER TUMMEL (WADE BRIDGE)

Mr. BURNETT: 25.
asked the Minister of Transport whether his attention has been drawn to the unsightly girder structure erected beside the Wade bridge spanning the Tummel; whether the plans were submitted to the amenity committee appointed in connection with the power scheme; and whether he will insist upon the demolition of the girder bridge and the carrying out of the original plan for a new road-bridge further down stream?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: The bridge referred to by my hon. Friend is a temporary structure erected by the power company solely for the purpose of conveying heavy plant and machinery to the Tummel Bridge Power Station during construction. I am unable to say whether the local amenity committee were consulted prior to the erection of the bridge. I have no powers to require the demolition of the bridge,- but I assume that it will be dismantled as soon as the power station is completed. The construction of a new bridge is primarily a matter for the highway authority concerned.

Mr. BURNETT: Can the Minister give an assurance that as early as possible he will try to insist that this disfigurement shall be taken away from what is one of the beauty spots of Scotland?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I think that my answer covers that point. The structure is only a temporary structure for a particular purpose.

TROLLEY OMNIBUSES AND TRAMCARS.

Mr. GLEDHILL: 26.
asked the Minister of Transport what investigation has taken place regarding the effect on road safety by the substitution of trolley vehicles for tramcars; and if any report has been issued?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I gave to a similar question on the 15th May by the hon. Member for Wimbledon(Sir J. Power), of which I am sending him a copy

Mr. GLEDHILL: Can the Minister say if the report of the inquiry will be published?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I would prefer that my hon. Friend should await the answer a copy of which I am sending to him.

BUILT-UP AREAS (SPEED LIMIT)

Mr. GLEDHILL: 27.
asked the Minister of Transport whether the regulations regarding speed limit are being applied to roads having street lighting which is not in use?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: My hon. Friend will appreciate that I have no authority to interpret the law, but it appears to me that a road may be furnished with a
system of street lighting even if the lamps are temporarily out of use.

Mr. GLEDHILL: May I ask my hon. Friend if he can advise drivers how they can recognise these lamp-posts in the darkness?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: It is the duty of the highway authority adequately to signpost these areas.

Mr. THORNE: Why do you not light them up?

Mr. GLEDHILL: They are not doing it that is the trouble.

Mr. SI MMONDS: 61.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department in what areas the authorities have declined to adopt his suggestion that police officers in motor-cars when trapping motorists who may exceed 30miles per hour in built-up areas shall wear plain clothes

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir John Gilmour): I have made no such suggestion. It is of course open to the police to patrol in plain clothes whether on foot or in vehicles, and it is for individual chief officers of police to determine in their discretion whether or not police in plain clothes should be employed for the purpose of detecting breaches of the speed limit provisions. At a conference of chief constables held on the 20thFebruary last, the question of the method of enforcing the speed limit was discussed, and the general feeling of the conference was in favour of the use of plain clothes for this purpose, but I regret that I am not in a position to give details of the methods adopted in the different areas.

Mr. SI MMONDS: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, in view of the poisonous atmosphere which these methods are creating—

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member can not use such epithets in the House.

ROADS, OXFORDSHIRE

Sir GIFFORD FOX: 33.
asked the Minister of Transport what action he in tends to take on the proposals submitted to him by the Oxfordshire County Council for the improvement of dangerous roads in the county?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: In view of the large number of road accidents in Oxfordshire, the County Council recently investigated the matter, with the result that it was found that nearly half the fatal accidents occurred on certain main roads, representing less than 6 per cent. of the total mileage of the roads in the County. The County Council there upon submitted proposals for improving the lay-out of 62road junctions on these main roads, which I have approved. I have also agreed to make a grant from the Road Fund towards the cost of all these improvements, on condition that they are completed within the next twelve months, in order to test whether such improvements carried out on a large scale will be effective in preventing road accidents.

Sir G. FOX: Can my hon. Friend in form the House the percentage of the grant?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I prefer to have notice of that question.

Mr. THORNE: Will the Minister be good enough to speed up these matters within the next twelve months; other wise, he will have the Chancellor of the Exchequer pinching some more of his fund?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: These matters are being speeded up.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL INDUSTRY

OIL EXTRACTION

Colonel ROPNER: 35.
asked the Secretary for Mines what was the approximate quantity of British coal submitted to oil extraction processes during the first quarter of 1935, and how this amount compared with the similar figure for 1934?

The SECRETARY for MINES (Mr. Ernest Brown): Statistics relating to the extraction of oil from coal are only collected by my Department annually. The figures for 1934 are expected to be avail able in a few weeks.

ACCIDENTS (BOYS).

Mr. T. SMITH: 36.
asked the Secretary for Mines the number of boys under 16
years of age killed and seriously injured underground during each of the last five years

Mr. E. BROWN: In 1930, 24 boys under 16 years of age were killed and 171 seriously injured belowground at mines under the Coal Mines Act. The corresponding figures for 1931 were 25 and 142; for 1932, 17 and 112; for1933, 15 and 101; and for 1934, 15 and 122.

Mr. WEST: Does not the Minister think that it is deplorable that children of 14 should be so employed when so many adults are unemployed to-day?

Viscountess ASTOR: Will the National Government try to see whether there is a way of stopping the employment of children under 16 in mines; will they try to find a way out?

County.
Number of Agricultural Holdings above 1 acre and not exceeding 50 acres in extent‡
Number of Statutory Small Holdings provided in the years1932–34.




1931.
1934.



Anglesey
…
3,588
3,600
8


Caernarvon
…
4,985
4,929
—


Merioneth
…
1,860
1,816
1*


Montgomery
…
3,361
3,291
10


Denbigh
…
3,941
3,893
11†


Flint
…
2,521
2,497
21


Total
…
20,256
20,026
51


* Cottage holding under 1 acre.


†Includes 2 cottage holdings under 1 acre.


‡These figures include parcels of land which are separately returned, but in many cases comprise areas of accommodation and other land which would not normally be regarded as agricultural or small holdings. The number of parcels of land of this description cannot be given.

MILK PRICES.

Captain P. MACDONALD: 38.
asked the Minister of Agriculture what considerations have led to the arrangements between ice cream manufacturers and the Milk Marketing Board enabling the former to obtain milk at specially reduced rates; and whether any progress has yet been made with the schemes for further increasing the consumption of milk by providing equally favourable rates for the hospitals?

Mr. ELLIOT: Under the terms of the contract prescribed by the Milk Marketing Board, after negotiation with representatives of the milk manufacturing and

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE.

SMALL HOLDINGS, NORTH WALES.

Major OWEN: 37
asked the Minister of Agriculture the number of small holdings of over one acre extent existing at present in the six North Wales counties; and how many of these have been created since 1931?

The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Elliot): I am circulating in the OFFICIALREPORT a statement showing the number of agricultural holdings over one acre and not exceeding 50 acres in 1931 and 1934 in the six North Wales counties, and also the number of statutory smallholdings provided since 1931. I regret that I am unable to give particulars of the number of small holdings of all kinds created since 1931.

Following is the statement:

distributive trades, the price of milk for use in the manufacture of ice cream is 7½ a gallon; provided that, unless the board otherwise agree, the purchaser buys not less than a daily average of 500 gallons and utilises not less than a daily average of 300 gallons for manufacturing purposes. I am informed that with a view to increasing sales of surplus fresh milk for ice cream manufacture, experimental arrangements have now been made whereby ice cream manufacturers who are unable to comply with these quantity conditions may obtain supplies, at rates slightly higher than 7½d. a gallon, through purchasers under the board's
contract. As to the last part of the question, I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the replies I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton (Sir J. Haslam) and to the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard) on 2nd May, to which at the moment there is nothing to add.

Captain MACDONALD: Does not my right hon. Friend think that hospitals are more deserving of special treatment than ice cream vendors?

Mr. ELLIOT: It is not aquestion of the deserving or otherwise of the particular persons involved. It is simply a question of business, and, as I have said, I have nothing to add to the answer which I gave on the 2ndMay.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION.

Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN: 39.
asked the Postmaster-General whether he will re quest the committee now considering the future of the British Broadcasting Corporation to inquire into the desirability, when appointments are being made to the Welsh staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation, that they shall be made of persons not in recept of Civil Service pensions and of persons who are able to give their whole time to their duties?

The ASSISTANT POSTMASTER-GENERAL(Sir Ernest Bennett): I would suggest that the hon. Member should communicate with the secretary of the committee on the matter.

Mr. BEVAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster-General add his own recommendations in the matter?

Sir E. BENNETT: That I am afraid I cannot undertake, but there is a Committee dealing with these matters and they have intimated their willingness to receive recommendations up to 31st May.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE.

SORTER'S DEATH (ANTHRAX).

Mr. THORNE: asked the Postmaster-General whether he has any information to give to the House in connection with the death of a Post Office employé from anthrax; whether the
cause of death was attributable to his employment; what compensation will be paid to his dependants; and whether he has any record of similar cases in his Department?

Sir E. BENNETT: I much regret to say that a sorter was taken ill and died while on holiday. At the inquest the Coroner found that death was due to anthrax but that there was no evidence as to how the deceased had become infected. The deceased's duties did not bring him into contact with any likely source of anthrax, and there would seem no good reason to attribute his death to his employment. A claim for compensation on behalf of his dependants has been received, but on present in formation there does not appear to be ground for payment of compensation. A gratuity will be payable under the Superannuation Acts. There is no record of a similar ease in the Post Office.

Mr. THORNE: I take it for granted that the man in question was on duty at the time, and, that being so, surely there is a moral obligation on the Post Office?

Sir E. BENNETT: He was on holiday.

. Mr. THORNE: He was in your employ at the time.

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: In view of the fact that a similar case of death from anthrax occurred at Hull—the man was not in the employment of the Post Office—And they could not find the source of the infection, will the hon. Gentleman he good enough to get into touch with the Home Office with a view to tightening up the restrictions upon foreign goat hair?

Sir E. BENNETT: That is a rather big order for me; but I can assure both the hon. Members who have taken an interest in this sad case that it is by no means closed.

MORNING DELIVERY, COCKERMOUTH.

Captain DOWER: 41.
asked the Post master-General whether he is aware that since the closing of the Bulgill to Cocker-mouth railway the morning mail in Cocker mouth is delivered about 10 o'clock, causing considerable inconvenience to business people and tradesmen; and what steps he proposes to take to arrange for an earlier delivery?

Sir E. BENNETT: The London Mid land and Scottish Railway Company found it necessary to suspend this passenger train service because the line was unsafe. The question of providing a more satisfactory alternative service is under discussion with the company.

Captain DOWER: Am I to understand that it is under consideration, and, if so, can the hon. Member assure me, because of the considerable inconvenience that is; being caused, that there will be no un necessary delay?

Sir E. BENNETT: I am sorry if I was inaudible. I have stated that the matter is under discussion with the company.

MONEY ORDER ENCASHMENT, Bow.

Mr. GROVES: 42.
asked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he will inquire into the circumstances attending the despatch of a money order for £13 7s. 4d. from the King's Royal Rifle Corps, Winchester, to C. Lincoln, of 13, Jefferson Street, Bow, under such conditions that the order went astray and was cashed by some other person; whether it is the practice for depots to despatch such money settlements to ex-service men by money order, only citing the man's initial and not his full name; and whether, as in this case the practice has led to the loss of the money, he will reimburse the man to the full amount and make such arrangements for future payment that no such order misdirected in the post can be cashed by the mere signing of a part name?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Douglas Hacking): I have ascertained that a money order for the amount quoted was correctly despatched on 12th April to the address given by Corporal Lincoln. The suggestion appears to be that some other person cashed the order by giving the name of this reservist and of the remitter at the local Post Office. When I have the full facts before me I will have the claim considered.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND.

HEAVY HORSE BREEDING.

Sir ROBERT SMITH: 43.
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether it is his intention to restore the grant for the breeding of heavy horses in Scot land which was discontinued in1932, and, if so, when it will be restored?

The SECRETARY of STATE for SCOTLAND(Sir Godfrey Collins): I do not consider it is necessary at the pre sent time, in the interests of Scottish Agriculture, to revive the scheme of grants for heavy horse breeding.

MILK PRICES.

Sir ROBERT HAMILTON: 44.
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he can explain why the summer price of 2s. charged to consumers for milk in Scotland, where there is a much larger surplus of milk than in England, should be higher than the summer price. in many parts of England; and what steps have been taken this summer by the consumers' committee to secure a reduction of the price?

Sir G. COLLINS: The summer price of. 2s. per gallon for milk in Scotland was found by the Committee of Investigation for Scotland to be a reasonable charge pending official inquiry into costs of production and distribution. As regards the last part of the question I have received a report from the Consumers' Committee expressing their views on the desirability of differentiating between winter and summer retail prices. The report is being published and copies of it will be supplied to the Milk Reorganisation Commission for Great Britain for their consideration.

Sir R. HAMILTON: 47.
asked the. Secretary of State for Scotland whether he can state the price which the cheese factories in Scotland pay at present for milk for manufacturing purposes; and. what price per gallon of milk was received by farmer cheese makers in the. Southwest of Scotland and the level producers in the East of Scotland, respectively, in the years1934 and 1935?

Sir G. COLLINS: The price charged by the Scottish Milk Marketing Board for milk for the manufacture of cheese in factories was 3.025d. per gallon during the month of April. The average of the monthly prices paid to registered producers (including cheese makers) over the calendar year 1934 and over the four months January to April, 1935, was10.96d. and 11.62d. per gallon respectively. I am sending to the hon. Member a statement giving further detailed information on the points raised in his question.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Can the right hon. Gentleman say exactly what steps are being taken in Scotland to increase the sale of liquid milk?

Sir G. COLLINS: The Board have a very extensive publicity scheme.

Mr. LEONARD: 49.
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will expedite a decision on the part of the committee investigating the milk charges demanded from public institutions?

Sir G. COLLINS: I have considered the report, and am grateful to the committee for the care with which they have sifted the evidence and arguments placed before them. It appears to me, however, that any proposal requiring a marketing board to give special terms to selected classes of consumers raises wide issues of policy, and cannot well be considered merely as a matter of amendment of an existing marketing scheme. The committee's views will be carefully examined in connection with the formulation of a policy for the milk industry following upon the temporary measures brought into operation under the Milk Act, 1934. In the meantime it is not practicable to require the Scottish Milk Marketing Board to give effect to the committee's suggestions.

Mr. LEONARD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the hospitals in Scot land during last year did not know what charges were being made for milk and that they are now entering into the second year's contracts in total ignorance of what they have to pay, and is the right hon. Gentleman also aware that this may possibly react on the use of grade A, tuberculin tested, milk, which may be eliminated as a precautionary measure by some hospitals?

Sir G. COLLINS: I hope that the latter suggestion will not develop. The matter raises large issues of policy, and it has been referred to the Milk Reorganisation Committee, who are presently investigating this and other matters.

Mr. LEONARD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the report to which he has referred, and which I presume is in his possession, stated that in so far as these institutions are not receiving special treatment it maybe said that the action of the Board is not in the public interest?
Is the right hon. Gentleman going to countenance something that is not in the public interest? If.a reduction in charges is made, can he ensure that the reduction will be retrospective?

Sir G. COLLINS: Preference cannot be given to one institution alone. The Consumers' Committee undoubtedly re commended that that step should betaken, but, unfortunately or fortunately, the Milk Marketing Board have no power to single out certain classes of institutions for preferential treatment at the moment.

Mr. PALING: Is it not just as necessary to supply cheap milk to public institutions as to ice cream vendors?

Sir G. COLLINS: The hon. Member must know that the Government have found large sums of money for supplying cheap milk for children in schools.

GLENCOE.

Sir IAN MACPHERSON: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that Glencoe is in danger of being used for the purpose of the worst form of development; and whether, in view of the historic interest and grandeur of this glen, the Government will take steps to preserve it for the nation?

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): I do not know what my right hon. Friend has in mind to secure, as we should all wish, the preservation of these historic amenities. I do not think that the Government could acquire the estate for the nation, and apart from such a step the only official machinery, so far as I am aware, would be a scheme under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1932. This would be a matter in the first in stance for the county council, whose attention is being called to it.

Captain P. MACDONALD: Will the right hon. Gentleman find some means of preventing another massacre in Glencoe?

MILK MARKETING SCHEME.

Sir R. HAMILTON: 48.
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is aware that the Scottish Milk Marketing Board receives a payment from the English Marketing Board as compensation for refraining from sending Scottish milk into England; what is the amount
of such annual payment; and how is the payment disposed of by the Scottish Milk Marketing Board?

Sir G. COLLINS: I have drawn the board's attention to the terms of the question and shall be glad to send the Hon. Member such information as the board may supply.

Sir R. HAMILTON: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an answer stating the amount of the annual payments made by the English Marketing Board to the Scottish Marketing Board?

Sir G. COLLINS: I have not the in formation by me, but I understand that it will be published shortly by the Milk Marketing Board.

Sir R. HAMILTON: Would itbe correct to say that it would be in the neighbourhood of £150,000 7

Sir G. COLLINS: I have not the figures before me.

Mr. PIKE: Would it be comparable to the amount paid for whisky?

Oral Answers to Questions — INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY (STABILISATION).

Mr. MALLALIEU: 46.
asked the Prime Minister whether His Majesty's Government has been in recent communication with the Government of the United States of America with a view to holding a conference on currency stabilisation and the reduction of barriers to international trade?

The PRIMEMINISTER: The answer is in the negative.

Mr. MALLALIEU: In view of the speeches of people in authority on the other side of the Atlantic, which appear to give a new approach to this question, will not the right hon. Gentleman him self take the initiative?

The PRIME MINISTER: No. We do not require at this late hour to take the initiative. We have been trying to get the initiative taken but up to now we have not been very successful.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH MERCANTILE MARINE (ALIEN SEAMEN)

Brigadier General NATION: 50.
asked the President of the Board of Trade
whether he has any information to give to the House regarding the investigation he is making on the subject of the employment of aliens on British ships?

Lieut.-Colonel J. COLVILLE (Secretary, Department of Overseas Trade): No, Sir; the investigations are not yet completed.

Brigadier-General NATION: Can the hon. and gallant Member say when the investigations of his Department are likely to be concluded?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: No, Sir, I am afraid that I cannot give a date, but I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that the matter is being actively pursued.

Brigadier-General NATION: Will it be in the present Session?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: I cannot say.

Mr. GODFREY NICHOLSON: Is the hon. and gallant Member aware of the uneasiness in all our ports about the employment of foreign seamen

Lieut.-ColonelCOLVILLE: Yes. The question is being actively examined and as soon as possible a statement will be made.

Mr. BUCHANAN: Will the hon. and gallant Member take care that people who belong to our Colonies and Protectorates are not vindictively treated and particularly that they are not declared to be foreigners, seeing that in fact that are not such?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: All relevant considerations such as that will be taken into account.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMAMENTS (EXPORT LICENCES)

Brigadier-General NATION: 51.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether any licences have been granted for the supply of armaments from this country to Germany during the last three years?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: No, Sir.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Is the hon. and gallant Member satisfied that none of the 90 aeroplanes that were exported to Ger many last year will be used for war purposes?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: I think that if the hon. Member will look at the supplementary answers given by the President of the Board of Trade on the2ndMay he will see that that subject was dealt with.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Can the hon. and gallant Member guarantee that any engine that can be used in these civil aeroplanes will not be used for war purposes?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: The hon. Member had better refer to the answer.

Mr. A. BEVAN: Is the hon. and gallant Member not aware that the President of the Board of Trade said that he could not distinguish between a civil aeroplane and a machine that might be used for bombing?

Lieut.-ColonelCOLVILLE: These questions arise out of an answer given by the President of the Board of Trade. The question that I was asked was in regard to licences for armaments. Such licences are not applicable to aeroplane engines.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (OUTDOOR RELIEF)

Mr. T. SMITH: asked the Minister of Health the number of persons in Eng land and Wales in receipt of outdoor relief at the end of March and April,1935?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH(Mr. Shakespeare): The number of persons in receipt of outdoor relief in England and Wales(including dependants, but excluding persons in receipt of domiciliary medical relief only) on the last Saturday in April,1935, was 1,167,091. The corresponding figure in March, 1935,was 1,173,895.

Mr. SMITH: asked the Minister of Health the number of unemployed persons and their dependants in England an Wales in receipt of outdoor relief at the end of March and April, 1935?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: The precise in formation asked for by the hon. Member is not available. The average number, however, of persons in receipt of out relief in England and Wales who were unemployed and registered at Employment Exchanges was 123,804 (with 222,283
dependants) in April, 1935. The corresponding figures inMarch1935, were 130,329 and 236,861. Figures are not available of the number of unemployed persons in receipt of out relief who are not registered at Employment Exchanges but it is estimated that the number (excluding dependants) is under10,000.

Mr. LAWSON: May I ask how it is that the Department have not a. complete list of the figures for these unemployed?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: Thefigures are not kept right up-to-date. The hon. Member must allow us time to get them in.

Mr. LAWSON: Can the Parliamentary Secretary give any explanation why the figures for these persons have continually increased?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: It must be be cause of a more generous interpretation of the regulations by the National Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE.

Mr. LOGAN: 54.
asked the Minister of Health the number of franks, respectively for men and women, and the total national health insurance contributions for men and women, separately, for the last two available periods, namely, the second period of 1933 and the first in 1934'?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: The particulars for the first period in 1934 are not yet available. The figures for the year 1933 are:

—
Men.
Women.


Number of franks Total Health Insurance contributions.
71,500,000
13,250,000


£17,100,000
£8,400,000

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING.

RENTS (BECONTREE ESTATE)

Sir P.HARRIS: 55.
asked the Minister of Health whether he has considered representations submitted by both the Dagenham Urban District Council and the Barking Borough Council as to the scales of rents charged by the London
County Council for houses on the Becontree estates located in their areas; and whether he is satisfied that the special conditions under which Exchequer grants are payable under the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1924, are being observed on this estate?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: Yes, Sir. The special conditions for grant are kept constantly under review, and, subject to the settlement of certain points arising on the district auditor's reports, on which my right hon. Friend is in communication with the London County Council, he is satisfied that the conditions have been observed.

Sir P. HARRIS: Is the hon. Member aware that rents on the London County Council estates are much higher than the rents on the estates at Dagenham and Barking?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: I am aware of that fact, but I understand that it is the policy of the London County Council to make a larger allocation for repairs.

Sir P. HARRIS: Does the hon. Member consider it satisfactory to charge existing tenants for repairs which may not be required while they are tenants of the houses?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: Our concern is to see that the particular Statute is carried out, and that is what we are doing now.

Mr. JANN ER: 58.
asked the Minister of Health whether his attention has been called to the much higher rents charged on the London County Council Becontree estates compared with rents on other estates owned by authorities in the same local government areas; what is there a son for this difference; and whether he is taking action in the matter?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: ,: I would refer to the answer I have given to the hon. Member for South West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris). Many factors, including differences in costs, operate in producing differences in rents. The provisions in the new Housing Bill for unification of conditions and for consolidation of subsidies will enable local authorities to get rid of a number of existing anomalies.

Mr. JANNER: Is the Parliamentary Secretary prepared to take into consideration the requests made to him by the two authorities referred to in the question and take any further action in the matter?

Mr. RHYS: Can he say whether it is not the fact that Becontree estate is subsidised by the London County Council?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: Our concern is to see that the conditions with regard to a subsidy under any one Act are observed. We are doing that now, and shall take any appropriate action which may be necessary.

SMALL DWELLINGS ACQUISITION ACT.

Major MILNER: 56.
asked the Minister of Health whether he can state what rate per cent. on the amount advanced covers the administrative expenses and losses, if any, of local authorities making advances under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: The ordinary allowance made for this purpose is ¼ per centum.

Major MILNER: Does not the figure indicate that these transactions are all carried through at a loss?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: No, local authorities get loans from the Public Works Commissioners at 3¼ per cent. and charge one quarter per cent. for management and administration expenses.

Major MILNER: Does not that indicate that all the transactions are carried through at a loss because one quarter per cent, does not cover the expenses of local authorities

Mr. PETHERICK: May I ask whether the one quarter per cent. includes, as it should include, a contribution towards the rent of the offices of a local authority, the expenses of staff, and other incidental expenses?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: I should say probably not.

Major MILNER: 57.
asked the Minister of Health whether he can give details of the sums, if any, lost by local authorities since 1925 in respect of advances made to property owners under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: My right hon. Friend regrets that the particulars desired by the hon. And gallant Member could not be obtained without disproportionate labour, but the financial returns made by local authorities in England and Wales indicate that taken as a, whole the losses are not considerable.

Major MILNER: Can the Parliamentary Secretary say why local authorities should continue to support private capitalists in this way?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: I do not think we can discuss that question.

Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN: Can the hon. Member say what excessive labour is involved in obtaining this information? Every local authority has it.

Major MILNER: Will the hon. Member endeavour to obtain it?

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION (TEACHERS' PENSIONS)

Sir P. HARRIS: 59.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education whether the new scale of pensions will apply to all teachers who retired between the date of the salary cuts and their full restoration and whether they will all get the advantage of the new scale of pensions' after July, 1935?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION(Mr. Ramsbotham): The answer to both parts of the question is in the affirmative. Under the Superannuation Act teachers' pensions are based on the average salary they receive during the last five years of their service, and any reduction in salary during this period is automatically reflected in their pensions. Teachers who have retired or will retire during the period between the dates of the reduction in salary and its restoration in full suffer a loss in pension which amounts in certain cases to 6½ per cent., but the effect of the Government's proposal is that no retired teacher will after 1stJuly lose more than 2 per cent. of the pension to which he would have been entitled had there been no cut in salary. The cost of this proposal to the Government is approximately 81,000,000,which is roughly equivalent to what the Government would have had to expend on teachers' superannuation had there
been no cuts in salary. To have restored the pension reductions in full and to have made that restoration retrospective would have involved the collection of increased contributions from all teachers and their employers on the basis indicated in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Fairfield (Mr. Brocklebank) on the 12th July last. The difficulties in this direction have proved to be insuperable, and I have already informed the House that the present proposal has been welcomed by the teachers' representatives as an agreed and final solution of the matter.

Mr. PETHERICK: Can the hon. Member say over what period this figure will be spread?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: About 14years.

Oral Answers to Questions — CRUELTY CONVICTION, FARNHAM.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: 60.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the case of two youths of 18 and 17years of age, who were convicted at Farnham of cruelty to two swans on the Basingstoke canal by pelting them with bricks until they were exhausted and maimed; whether he is aware that, on being charged, the youths stated that even if they had killed the swans they could have paid for them; and whether he will amend the law so as to ensure the infliction of punishment which will act as a more effective deterrent to such brutality than either imprisonment or fines?

Sir J. GILMOUR: While I fully sympathise with my hon. and gallant Friend's desire that effective action shall be taken to prevent conduct of this kind I do not think that the case affords ground for an amendment of the existing law.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: Has the right hon. Gentleman in mind any means or methods by which such brutes as these can be brought to experience something of the pain which they inflict

Oral Answers to Questions — FACTORY ACTS (JUVENILES)

Mr. DENMAN: 62.
asked the Home Secretary what information he can give as to the extent to which the maximum weekly hours, apart from overtime, permitted by the Factory Acts for the employment of young persons are in fact worked?

Sir J. GILMOUR: I have no precise information on the point, but reports on working hours generally would indicate that as a rule the legal maximum is only worked by young persons on occasions or in periods of exceptional pressure.

Mr. DENMAN: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman does not recognise that a.60hour week for a young person i3 a wholly obsolete idea, and will he not continue the excellent work he has already done by reducing the maximum to 48 hours?

Viscountess ASTOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman also bear in mind that as we have left out 300,000 juveniles un regulated and cannot do anything for them we should at least protect those who are included?

Oral Answers to Questions — POLITICAL PUBLICATION (ROYAL PORTRAITS)

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: 63.
asked the Home Secretary whether he will consider introducing legislation to prevent the printing of portraits of Their Majesties on political propaganda pub lications?

Sir J. GILMOUR: No, Sir.

Mr. DAVIES: Has the attention of the right hon. Gentleman been called to a publication which is issued monthly by a local joint coordinating committee of the Conservative party, the Liberal party and the Labour group representing the Government, in which these portraits are reproduced each month, and does he think that that is a very desirable thing to do?

Sir J. GILMOUR: This is not a matter which concerns the Government and I have no very detailed information on the subject. I believe it was confined to one issue, and no doubt that was largely be cause of the Jubileespirit abroad. But it was an indiscretion no doubt.

Mr. DAVIES: May we take it, there fore, that, although the right hon. Gentleman is speaking today as a Cabinet Minister, as an hon. Gentleman he will tell the responsible party to stop this sort of thing?

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: If the Government are unwilling to introduce legislation to
prohibit such use of these portraits, can not the right hon. Gentleman and the Prime Minister and the Government as a whole discountenance such unworthy political methods?

Sir J. GILMOUR: This has really nothing to do with the Government, and all I say is that it is an indiscretion for any one to use these portraits.

Mr. BUCHANAN: Is it not a fact that all political parties today are competing in making use of the Jubilee?

Oral Answers to Questions — INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT, WEDNESBURY.

Mr. THORNE: 64.
asked the Home Secretary whether he has received a re port from his factory inspector in connection with the fatal accident to a youth employed by Messrs. Joseph Hampton, Limited, nut and bolt manufacturers, Wednesbury, who were summoned for an alleged breach of the safety regulations at their factory; whether he can state the cause of death; and whether he intends taking any action in the matter?

Sir J. GILMOUR: I presume the hon. Member refers to an accident on the 14th February to a youth who was caught in some overhead machinery. Legal proceedings have been instituted in connection with this accident but are still sub judice, and I am not in a position to make any further statement.

Oral Answers to Questions — POOR PRISONERS DEFENCE ACT.

Mr. A. BEVAN: 65.
asked the Home Secretary how many legal aid certificates under the Poor Prisoners Defence Act of1930 were issued by the courts of summary jurisdiction of Great Britain during the last year for which records are avail able?

Sir J. GILMOUR: The number of legal aid certificates granted by magistrates during 1933 was655.

Major MILNER: Are these numbers increasing year by year or are they stationary?

Sir J. GILMOUR: I require notice of that question.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE (VICTORY BONDS).

Sir WILLIAM DAVISON: 66.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will state the date fixed for the next draw of Victory Bonds; where and by whom the draw will be made; what is the nature of the arrangements for mixing and drawing the numbers; and whether the public who have participated in this national lottery will be admitted to witness the draw?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Duff Cooper): The next drawing will take place on the 17th June at the Bank of England, in the presence of representatives of the Treasury, the National Debt Commissioners, and the Bank. The procedure is as laid down in Regulations made by the Treasury under the War Loan Act, 1919, and published in the London Gazette of the 1st June,1920.The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative. I should add that according to the highest legal authority the drawing of Victory Bonds does not constitute a lottery. I presume that my hon. Friend has appreciated that whereas the market price of the bonds is about 116 the drawn bonds are paid off at 100.

Sir W. DAVISON: Is my hon. Friend aware that that was the exact point of the question and that every person who draws one of these bonds loses £16,and is it not desirable that the public should at least have information as to the nature of the draw?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL MINT (DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD PIECES).

Sir W. DAVISON: 67.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether in view of the public dissatisfaction at the lack of publicity in connection with the recent draw at the Royal Mint for 25 £50 gold pieces, whereby only some 1,300 persons were able to compete for these souvenirs, he will arrange for a, draw for 500 £10 gold specimen Jubilee pieces by means of 10s. tickets to be issued to the public at any Post Office, the amount of any subscriptions not required to reimburse the Treasury for incidental expenses to be handed to the Lord Mayor of London for the National Jubilee Trust?

Mr. COOPER: No, Sir; I am advised that an arrangement on the lines
suggested by my hon. Friend would constitute a lottery, and could not be adopted without a breach of the law.

Sir W. DAVISON: Is my hon. Friend aware of the strong demand on the part of the public for a draw of the kind mentioned in the question, which would not only enable the public to have a fair chance of getting one of these tokens, but would also enable a large contribution to be made to the National Jubilee Trust?

Oral Answers to Questions — GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY (LORRY DRIVER'S WAGES).

Captain STRICKLAND: 69.
asked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been directed to the prosecution at Southam Police Court on 20th May of the driver of a, two-ton Thornycroft lorry, employed by the Great Western Railway Company, in which the driver stated that his earnings were 35s. per week; and whether he will inquire from the railway company how the wages paid by them compare with the minimum wage paid byroad transport firms?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. R. S. Hudson): My attention has not been drawn to the case referred to by my hon. and gallant Friend. If he will be good enough to let me have further particulars I will look into the matter.

Captain STRICKLAND: Has my hon. Friend any control over the wages paid by railway companies or control of the wages paid by transport firms?

Mr. HUDSON: My hon. Friend had better put that question on the Paper.

Oral Answers to Questions — NEW MEMBER SWORN

Sir James Douglas Wishart Thomson, baronet, for Burgh of Aberdeen(South Division).

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. LANSBURY: Would the Prime Minister state how far he proposes to go tonight if the Motion for the suspension of the Eleven o'Clock Rule is carried?

The PRIME MINISTER: If the Motion is carried, we propose to take the first four Orders on the Paper. The substantial one, of course, is the first one, but I understand that the Report stage
will be concluded about 6.30, and that then we shall proceed to the Third Reading of the Bill. I have been informed, I think quite accurately, that Orders Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are to all intents and purposes non-contentious business.

Motion made, and Question put, "That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order(Sittings of the House)."—[The Prime Minister.]

The House divided: Ayes, 291; Noes, 49.

Division No. 223.]
AYES.
[3.48 p.m.


Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Dyke
Dugdale, Captain Thomas Lionel
Lambert, Rt. Hon. George


Adams, Samuel Vyvyan T.(Leeds, W.)
Duggan, Hubert John
Law, Sir Alfred


Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G.
Duncan, James A.L.(Kensington, N.)
Leighton, Major B. E. P.


Allen, Lt.-Col J. Sandeman (B'k'nh'd)
Dunglass, Lord
Levy, Thomas


Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent)
Eady, George H.
Lewis, Oswald


Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir William (Armagh)
Eaies, John Frederick
Lindsay, Kenneth (Kilmarnock)


Assheton, Ralph
Eden, Rt. Hon. Anthony
Lindsay, Noel Ker


Astor, Viscountess (Plymouth, Sutton)
Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey
Liewellin, Major John J.


Atholl, Duchess of
Entwistle, Cyril Fullard
Llewellyn Jones, Frederick


Bailey, Eric Alfred George
Evans, R. T.(Carmarthen)
Locker-Lampson, Com. O. (H'ndsw'th)


Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M.
Everard, W. Lindsay
Loder, Captain J. de Vere


Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley
Fermoy, Lord
Loftus, Pierce C.


Burton, Capt. Basil Kelsey
Fleming, Edward Lasceiles
Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander


Beauchamp, Sir Brograve Campbell
Foot, Isaac (Cornwall, Bodmin)
Lumley, Captain Lawrence R.


Beaumont, Hon. R.E.B.(Porttm'th. C.)
Fox, Sir Gifford
Mabane, William


Bunn, Sir Arthur Shirley
Galbraith, James Francis Wallace
MacAndrew, Lieut.-Col. C.G.(Partick)


Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel
Ganzoni, Sir John
MacAndrew, Major J. O.(Ayr)


Bernays, Robert
Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton
MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R.(Seaham)


Blinded, James
Gibson, Charles Granville
Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)


Boulton, W. W.
Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John
McEwen, Captain J. H. F.


Brass, Captain Sir William
Glossop, C. W. H
McKie, John Hamilton


Broadbent, Colonel John
Gluckstein, Louis Haile
Maclay, Hon. Joseph Paton


Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Glyn, Major Sir Ralph G. C.
McLean, Dr. W. H. (Tradeston)


Brown, Col. D. C.(N'th'l'd, Hexham)
Goff, Sir Park
Macpherson, Rt. Hon. Sir Ian


Brown, Ernest(Leith)
Goodman, Colonel Albert W.
Magnay, Thomas


Briwn, Brig.-Gen. H. C.(Berks., Newb'y)
Granville, Edgar
Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest


Browne, Captain A. C.
Grattan, Doyle, Sir Nicholas
Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot


Buchan-Hepburn, P.G.T.
Graves, Marjorie
Mander, Geoffrey le M.


Bullock, Captain Malcoim
Grigg, Sir Edward
Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M.


Burghley, Lord
Grimston, R. V.
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.


Burnett, John George
Guest, Capt. Rt. Hon. F. E.
Marsden, Commander Arthur


Cadogan, Hon. Edward
Guinness, Thomas L. E. B.
Martin, Thomas B.


Campbell-Johnston, Maicoim
Gunston Captain D.W.
Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John


Caporn, Arthur Cecil
Guy, J. C. Morrison
Meller, Sir Richard James(Mitcham)


Castlereagh, Viscount
Hall, Capt. W. D'Arcy (Brecon)
Mellor, Sir J. S. P.


Cautley, Sir Henry S.
Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)
Mills, Sir Richard (Layton, E.)


Cayzer, Sir Charles (Chester, City)
Hamilton, Sir R.W. (Orkney & Zetl'nd)
Milne, Charles


Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)
Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry
Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)


Cazalet, Capt. V. A. (Chippenham)
Harbord, Arthur
Monsell, Rt. Hon. Sir B. Eyres


Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N.(Edgbaston)
Harris, Sir Percy
Moore, Lt.-Col. Thomas C. R.(Ayr)


Chapman, Col. R.(Houghton-le-Spring)
Hartington, Marquess of
Moreing, Adrian C.


Choriton, Alan Ernest Leofric
Hartland George A
Morgan, Robert H.


Clarke, Frank
Harvey. George (Lambeth, Kenningt'n)
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)


Clayton, Sir Christopher
Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes)
Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univer'ties)


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)
Moss, Captain H. J.


Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.
Haslam, Sir John(Bolton)
Muirhead, Lieut.-Colonel A. J.


Colfox, Major William Philip
Hradlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M.
Nation, Brigadier General J. J. H.


Collins, Rt. Hon. Sir Godfrey
Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.
Nicholson, Godfrey(Morpeth)


Colman, N. C. D.
Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P.
Nicholson, Rt. Hn. W. G. (Petersf'ld)


Colvilla, Lieut.-Colonel J.
Herbert, Capt. S.(Abbey Division)
Norie-Miller, Francis


Conant, R. J. E.
Hoare, Lt. Col. Rt. Hon. Sir S. J. G.
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William G. A.


Cook, Thomas A.
Holdsworth, Herbert
Orr Ewing, I. L.


Cooke, Douglas
Hore-Belisha, Leslie
Palmer, Francis Noel


Cooper, A. Duff
Hornby, frank
Patrick, Colin M.


Copeland, Ida
Horsbrugh, Florence
Peake, Osbert


Courthope, Colonel Sir George L.
Howitt, Dr. Alfred B.
Petherick, M.


Cranborne, Viscount
Hudson, Capt. A. U. M.(Hackney, N.)
Peto, Sir Basil E.(Devon, Barnstaple)


Crooke, J. Smedley
Hudson, Robert Spear(Southport)
Peto, Geoffrey K.(W'verh'pt'n, Bilst'n)


Crookshank, Col. C. de Windt (Bootle)
Hurst, Sir Gerald B.
Pickthorn, K. W. M.


Crookshank, Capt. H. C.(Gainsb'ro)
Jackson, Sir Henry (Wandsworth, C.)
Pike Cecil F.


Crost, R. H.
James, Wing.-Com. A. W. H.
Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.


Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard
Janner, Barnett
Power, Sir John Cecil


Curry, A. C.
Jesson, Major Thomas E.
Procter, Major Henry Adam


Davies, Maj. Geo. F.(Somerset, Yeovil)
Johnston, J. W.(Clackmannan)
Ramsay, T. B. W.(Western Isles)


Davison, Sir William Henry
Johnstone, Harcourt(S. Shields)
Ramsbotham, Herwald


Dawton, Sir Philip
Ker, J. Campbell
Ramsden, Sir Eugene


Denman, Hon. R.D.
Kerr, Hamilton W.
Rankin, Robert


Dickie, John P.
Keyes, Admiral Sir Roger
Rea, Walter Russell


Doran, Edward
Kimball, Lawrence
Reed, Arthur C.(Exeter)


Dower, Captain A. V. G.
Kirkpatrick, William M.
Reid, David D. (County Down)


Drewe, Cedric
Knox, Sir Alfrec
Reid, James S. C. (Stirling)


Duckworth, George A. V.
Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton
Reid, William Allan (Derby)


Renwick, Major Gustav A.
Smith, Sir J. Walker (Barrow-in-F.)
Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement


Rhys, Hon. Charles Arthur U.
Smith, Sir Robert (Ab'd'n & K'dine, C.)
Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L


Rickards, George William
Smithers, Sir Waldron
Wallace, Captain D. E. (Hornsey)


Ropner, Colonel L.
Somervell, Sir Donald
Wallace, Sir John (Dunfermline)


Rosbotham, Sir Thomas
Somerville, Annesley A. (Windsor)
Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)


Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)
Soper, Richard
Ward, Irene Mary Bewick (Wallsend)


Rothschild, James A. de
Southby, Commander Archibald R. J.
Ward, Sarah Adelaide (Cannock)


Runge, Norah Cecil
Spencer, Captain Richard A.
Watt, Major George Steven H.


Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy)
Spender-Clay, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.
Wayland, Sir William A.


Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)
Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour


Russell, R. J. (Eddisbury)
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)
Weymouth, Viscount


Rutherford, John (Edmonton)
Stones, James
White, Henry Graham


Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)
Storey, Samuel
Williams, Charles (Devon. Torquay)


Salmon, Sir Isidore
Stourton, Hon. John J.
Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir Arnold (Hertl'd)


Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)
Strauss, Edward A.
Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George


Samuel, Ht. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)
Strickland, Captain W. F.
Wise, Alfred R.


Samuel, M. R. A. (W'ds'wth, Putney)
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir Murray F.
Womersley, Sir Walter


Sanderson, Sir Frank Barnard
Sutcliffe, Harold
Wood, Sir Murdoch McKenzie (Banff]


Sassoon, Rt. Hon. Sir Philip A. G. D.
Tate, Mavis Constance
Worthington, Dr. John V.


Savery, Servington
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Derby)
Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'v'oaks)


Selley, Harry R.
Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford)
Young, Ernest J. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.
Thompson, Sir Luke



Shaw, Helen B. (Lanark, Bothwell)
Thomson, Sir James D. w.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Simmonds, Oliver Edwin
Todd, Lt.-Col. A. J. K. (B'wick-on-T.)
Sir George Penny and Sir Victor


Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John
Todd, A. L. S. (Kingswinford)
Warrender


Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Walter D.
Train, John



NOES.


Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South)
George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)
McEntee, Valentine L.


Attlee, Clement Richard
George, Megan A. Lloyd (Anglesea)
Maclean. Nell (Glasgow, Govan)


Banfield, John William
Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
Mainwaring, William Henry


Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)
Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur
Milner, Major James


Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)
Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan)
Owen, Major Goronwy


Buchanan, George
Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding)
Parkinson, John Allen


Cape, Thomas
Grundy, Thomas W.
Salter, Dr. Alfred


Cleary, J. J.
Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Smith, Tom (Normanton)


Cocks, Frederick Seymour
John, William
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)


Cove, William G.
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Thorne, William James


Dagger, George
Kirkwood, David
Tinker, John Joseph


Davies, David L. (Pontypridd)
Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
West, F. R.


Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)
Lawson, John James
Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)


Davies, Stephen Owen
Leonard, William
Williams. Thomas (York, Don Valley)


Dobbie, William
Logan, David Gilbert
Wilmot, John


Edwards. Charles
Lunn, William



Gardner, Benjamin Walter
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—




Mr. Paling and Mr. Groves.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have agreed to,

London County Council (General Powers) Bill, with Amendments.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES)

SCOTTISH STANDING COMMITTEE.

Mr. William Nicholson reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added the following Member to the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills: Sir Douglas Thomson.

Report to lie on the Table.

Orders of the Day — HOUSING BILL.

As amended (in the Standing Committee and on recommittal) further considered.

CLAUSE 82.—(Amendments as to allowances in respect of demolitions, etc.)

3.58 p.m.

Mr. ARTHUR GREENWOOD: I beg to move, in page 62, line 4, to leave out Subsection (2).
I wish to make it clear that I have no objection, nor have my colleagues any objection, to giving reasonable assistance to retail traders who happen to be displaced because of there housing of the people. Indeed, in Section 41 of the 1930 Act, I made provision for allowances in respect of traders having to quit their places of business because of slum clearance schemes. Therefore, I am not arguing against some provision of that kind but Subsection (2) of this Clause raises a number of very serious principles. The first part of the Clause refers to Section 41 of the Act of 1930 and the proposal is to introduce the following Subsection at the end of the said Section 41:
(2) Where as a result of action taken by a local authority under Part I of this Act the population of the locality is materially decreased, they may pay to any person carrying on are tail shop in the locality such reasonable allowance as they think fit towards any loss which in their opinion he will there by sustain, but in estimating any such loss they shall have regard to the probable future development of the locality.
I should like the Minister to explain the meaning of the term "the locality." How far does a locality extend? With the modern system of transport for shopping purposes, a locality may be a2d. or 3d. tram or omnibus ride from the places where people live. The suggestion is that in a locality so very vaguely setout as "the locality," it will be possible under this Measure for a local authority to grant a permanent dole to retail traders who, it is alleged, have lost trade because, owing to the abatement of over crowding. their trade has declined. If there is one thing about this Clause which, I think, is worse than any other, it is the fact that no time limit is put in. This proposal would permit a local authority to grant an annuity for life to
a small shopkeeper who could persuade the local authority that, as the result of abatement of overcrowding, he had lost a certain amount of trade, but, of course, the difficulty in practice would be that, whereas the multiple shops in any area keep their books very accurately, the small shopkeeper or costermonger with his barrow in the East End area keeps no books at all, and would find it very difficult to convince the local authority that because of this overcrowding he had lost trade. Certain large multiple stores, which I will not name, could, with the aid of their accountants, advisers and lawyers, convince any local authority that their large multiple stores had been imperilled for the rest of their existence, and then they might profit as the result of this Bill. I do not understand how this loss of custom arising from a decrease in the population of an area is to be measured. It may be that small shops have been going down hill for years, for one reason or another, quite unconnected with the abatement of overcrowding. There are no indications as to how a local authority is to proceed in assessing the loss which is due to the action of the Government in bringing in this Bill.
My chief objection to this Clause is that it is really establishing a new principle, not in the sense of a dole, because the principle of the dole has been applied by this Government most generously to all kinds of interests, but it is a new principle which is capable of infinite application. I should like to put to the House the question, whether, in accepting the Clause, we accept all its implications; whether, whenever the community, either through a local authority or through the Houses of Parliament, takes action which may detrimentally affect the economic interests of certain persons, we are, therefore, to give those persons who happen to be detrimentally affected compensation for life? I put this as a very serious question to the Minister of Health. Suppose the Government decide to move the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich to the West of Wales, and the suggestion has been made many times. We do not know yet what the Government's answer to that is, but suppose the Arsenal were to be removed lock, stock and barrel to some other part of the country, would the Government be prepared, on the same principle as in Clause 82, to provide, for an unlimited
period, compensation to all the retail traders in "the locality," whatever that might mean I Would they be 'prepared to pay compensation for the loss of trade in the whole of that district 7 If they are not prepared to do so, then they have no right to introduce this principle in the Bill and impose it upon local authorities.
Although I know that this Clause is permissive, it does impose anew burden upon local authorities far wider in its scope than the relatively small burden which was imposed by Section 41 of the Act of 1930. I do not suppose that this Clause is the result of negotiations with the local authorities, and I am bound to say that I object—and this is not the first occasion in this Bill where it has arisen—to the Government holding out the hope of a certain subsidy to local authorities, and then proceeding in the Bill to deprive them of the full advantages of that by imposing certain new responsibilities upon them. It may be said, and I have no doubt that it will be said in the discussion on this Amendment, that this is purely permissive, but I am bound to say that I know no single occasion where in a Government Bill possibilities of logrolling have been more likely than in the case of this Clause. Every little shopkeeper and every large multiple store are going to exercise all the political pressure they can to bully local authorities into making financial provision for shopkeepers, because, owing to change in social circumstances, aided by the Government, certain people are going to lose money. It is quite true that local authorities need not use this power unless they desire to do so, but I suggest that every organisation in this country interested in retail trade will mobilise all its political resources into compelling local authorities, out of the rates, without any assistance from the State, to provide compensation, in circumstances and conditions of which we are not aware at the moment, to shopkeepers who mayor may not have lost trade because of the operation of this Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament.
I submit that this Clause is really a danger to the integrity of our municipal life. I think it establishes a principle which cannot be defended. I think it is going to be one of the blots on a Bill, which I do not think is too good a Bill,
and about which I shall have something to say later. I ask the House to consider very carefully whether by inserting this loosely drawn new Subsection into the Act of 1930 for compensation to traders, without any kind of conditions, for an unlimited period of time, this House is acting in the best interests of the people, and is really going to assist the abatement of overcrowding I think the right hon. Gentleman has been a little too prone to listen to those who have financial claims. There is a generosity in this Bill for the owners of property, whether they be owners of houses or occupiers of shops, which, I think, is unfortunate. I can understand his desire to meet the claims which have been made by the slum owners. I can even under stand his desire to exploit the political significance of bribes to shopkeepers. But I am bound to say that I think this kind of assistance is open to the gravest possible objection. In 1930provision was made of a purely limited kind for shop keepers who were displaced because of a slum clearance scheme. This Clause, which is an addition to the 1930 Act, opens up a much wider principle, and I should hope that even now, on the Report stage, the right hon. Gentleman would be prepared either to withdraw it, or to undertake some revision of it perhaps on the lines suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Upton (Mr. Gardner), which would limit its operation to an amount which this House, and which local authorities, without being under the influence of pressure, would regard as being reasonable.

4.14 p.m.

Sir PERCY HARRIS: The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken I think will recognise that I feel very little sympathy with any part of the Bill that proposes to increase compensation to owners of slum property. I have taken the line that if people have bad property, they must pay the penalty. But I think there is a very important differentiation between the cases with which this Sub section attempts to deal. I think the right hon. Gentleman will admit—Ibelieve he did admit in Committee—that what he aims at is very difficult to achieve. In fact, that explains why the whole matter is left to the discretion of the local authority. I have had, in the course of my considerable experience of local government, a good deal of experi-
ence in this job of slum clearance. I have always thought that there has been gross exaggeration about cases of hard ship which have been shouted from the housetops, but the case of the small shopkeeper, what is called the general shopkeeper, who deals in a little sweets, a little tobacco, a little grocery, and perhaps does a little trade in milk, who is generally located in the poor areas, does deserve special treatment. For a great number of years it has been the custom of the London County Council generally to make some special provision in these cases in the direction either of reinstatement or of a, compassionate allowance, but it has always been of very doubtful legality.
Most of these people are weekly tenants and depend for their living on the existence of houses in a particular area. When the houses are cleared away their livings and their businesses go too, and only too often there is no opportunity to start again. They have nothing to sell, their capital is small, and it is a serious blow to them. It is difficult to interpret words in an Act of Parliament, but I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman aims—I hope he does not—at giving compensation to the multiple shop and the cooperative store. I do not believe any decent local authority would consider they were under an obligation to compensate them, because what they would lose in one area they would gain in another. They would be able to open new shops in the area to which the displaced people had moved, and the local authority could be trusted to use its power with wisdom and discretion. What I believe the majority of the House feels is that there are cases of great hardship in the kind of areas that will be cleared and are being cleared under the Act of1930, and, if by some words in the Bill the attitude of local authorities in the past can be legalised, it will be in the interests of the local authorities concerned and will remove a serious cause of hardship and uncertainty to the small shopkeepers.

4.19 p.m.

Mr. LEVY: I think that the Minister of Health is doing right in including this Subsection, and hope that he will not accept the Amendment. I gather that my right hon. Friend has in find that where
a slum area is cleared and the people are displaced the shopkeepers concerned will have to bear a great hardship until rebuilding takes place. I have in mind 'an area that was cleared. For seven or eight months the small shopkeepers surrounding that area practically lost their custom. It is only fair and right that they should be allowed to have compensation, if the local authority feels it is right and proper—it is in their discretion—until the blocks of flats which are being built are occupied. During the building of the flats these shopkeepers are struggling to get a living and their custom has gone. They should receive some small compensation during this period, and when the population returns the compensation should cease.
I have always felt that hon. Members opposite look upon even the smallest shopkeeper who has some employés as a capitalist and a person who should not be considered at all. They have no hesitation in considering the employés, but in their view the shopkeeper himself is not to be considered. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) was a little inaccurate when he said that these small shopkeepers did not keep books, because they have to make Income Tax returns, and they cannot do that without keeping proper books. The right hon. Gentleman raised the question as to the extent of the locality. That should be determined by the common sense of the local authority in the administration of this Clause. Although I do not altogether agree with every part of this Bill, I think that this provision is wise, and I hope my right hon. Friend will reject the Amendment.

4.22 p.m.

Mr. GARDNER: I rise to reinforce what has been said by the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) When this Clause was discussed in Committee, we raised the question of what was meant by "the locality," and we did not get a satisfactory answer. The word "locality" occurs in this Subsection three times, and the Subsection turns round it. It is a very loose word, and is unknown to English law, as far as I can ascertain. Its only existence in law was in an Act of 1862, which was repealed in1903, and then it could not stand alone; it had to be qualified, and to make it operative a resolution of the licensing
magistrates was required, for they had to define a particular locality. That is all we want to do. As used in this Sub section the word "locality" may mean the next street and even the next town, and local authorities will have great difficulty in operating the Subsection. This is my 29th year as a local administrator, and I can see the many pitfalls that there 'are in this wording. There are unscrupulous people who want to get on to town councils. They will take up the case of the shopkeepers in a locality and create in their mind a political prejudice. In some cases they will probably succeed in blackmailing the local 'authority that really wishes to help the small shopkeeper.
The fact that this Subsection is so wide may cause some authorities to hesitate to put it into operation. Our desire in moving the Amendment is to help the Government and to protect the local authorities. I know that the loose ness of wording is not the fault of the Minister, for he was kindhearted and accepted this Clause from the hon. Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams). This matter was referred to in the "News Letter," an organ of which some hon. Members may have heard. It has a wide circulation among Members of Parliament, nearly all of whom, I believe, are on the free list. Speaking of the acceptance of the new Clause by the Minister, it said that the Clause opened up complex questions and dangerous possibilities. I am inclined to agree. Twice in the Clause the local authorities are supposed to be more or less gifted with second sight. They are to pay
such reasonable allowance as they think fit towards any loss which in their opinion
a shopkeeper will thereby sustain. They have to look into the future. They are not to judge of something that has been ascertained, which is the usual procedure, as far as I know, incases of loss and damage where a public authority has moved and somebody has suffered. The question of betterment also comes under the Subsection, for it says,
in estimating any such loss they shall have regard to the probable future development of the locality.
That is what I understand by the word "betterment." Here again they have to gaze into the future and estimate what will happen in the locality. It gives a
chance of discrimination between one shopkeeper and another. The local authorities can say in one case, "You have suffered loss, and you will be compensated"; and in another case, "You have suffered loss, but you will be all right by and by." We ask that the Sub section should be put into proper shape, so that the local authorities will not be subjected to the kind of thing that is likely to arise if it becomes law.

4.27 p.m.

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Hilton Young): I appreciate to the full the motives that underlie the arguments which call this Clause particularly to the attention of the House. When any fresh provisions for compensation are included they deserve that careful scrutiny which is suggested by hon. Members opposite. In all these matters of compensation in slum clearance procedure there is an element of novelty which requires the careful attention of the House. I therefore welcome the opportunity of dealing with this new proposal in the light of the criticisms that have been made. It is the result of a careful Debate in Committee at a time, I think, when the mind of the Committee, among all the elements that constituted it, was in favour of some such proposal. I think that when we see exactly what we are doing we shall see that the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) rather tended to make a mountain out of a molehill. It is legitimate, I think, to send him to his own molehill, because this proposal is a natural consequence of the temporary allowances to shopkeepers which were included in the Act of 1930, for which he was responsible.
What is it we are doing? Already under the law a local authority can, of their own free will, give an allowance by way of compensation to shopkeepers who are bought out at site value. That is the basis to which we have to relate our present proposals. To that we add, under the Bill, the proposal that when the shopkeeper is not bought out at site value but at market value he shall be able to get a voluntary allowance at the freewill of the local authority. Having accepted the principle that there may be voluntary compensation when you move the shop away from the business, we here accept the proposition that there may
also be voluntary compensation when you move the business away from the shop. That appears to me to be almost a necessary consequence of the first provision. I can quite understand that when the proposals were first framed that logical consequence would not present itself to the minds of practical administrators, but in the course of experience it has been found that there was this difficulty in the way of local authorities, and to remove that difficulty this provision is necessary.
Let us remember the purpose of all these provisions. It is to increase the flexibility of the powers of local authorities, in order to facilitate their task in these great schemes of slum clearance. We have learned by practical experience that nothing facilitates that task so much as enabling them to deal reasonably with hard cases, and that is what we are after—giving them power to deal with hard cases in a common sense way. As was pointed out by the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) these are voluntary powers. There is no compulsion on the local authorities to exercise them, and as he also pointed out there will be no temptation for a local authority to exercise them in other than a common sense manner. That deals with the basis of this proposal as regards the general principle. But there is a further criticism made by the right hon. Member for Wakefield and by the hon. Member for the Upton Division (Mr. Gardner) with which I feel I have to deal, namely, that the provision itself is framed in too loose a manner. It is often dangerous to suggest a generality in order to defend a particular case, but may I suggest that while, when you are imposing a duty on somebody, you cannot define that duty too clearly, when you are giving a voluntary power it is often much better not to define it but to leave it as flexible as possible, in order that that voluntary power may be exercised in a reasonable way. That has been our guiding principle in drafting this Clause—to leave the power as flexible as possible in order that it may be exercised in a spirit of common sense to meet the circumstances of the case.
We have laid down what appear to me to be the two essential qualifications. First of all, attention is to be paid to
the future development of the locality. I am not sure whether that is technically "betterment" or not, but it is a circumstance to which the local authority ought to pay attention although one of which they are likely to lose sight unless it is particularly brought to their notice. The second phrase in the Clause to which particular criticism has been directed is that which states that local authorities are to have power to give an allowance in respect of a shop where the population of the locality is materially reduced. There, I believe, the phrase is really a helpful one. The question of what is the locality really answers itself in this case, because the real test is whether damage is going to be suffered by the moving away of the population. Unless there is such damage there can be no allowance; and so the definition of locality really means any shop which is so close that it would actually lose custom by the moving away of the population. It is the practical test, the test which is really relevant to the loss which has to be considered. I am not afraid of the fact that "locality" has not often been used be fore in Acts of Parliament, because when you are setting out to deal with new conditions it is often better to use a phrase which has not a legal history but one which can be interpreted in accordance with the new conditions.
The right hon. Gentleman also ex pressed his fear that the inclusion of this fresh provision might lead to more pressure, as I understood, pressure of an illegitimate sort, upon the local authorities by the shopkeepers. I should not have supposed myself that that apprehension was justified. I think that what leads to illegitimate, vehement pressure is a sense that some injustice is 'being done, that a man finds himself in a position in which he is beating himself against a brick wall and cannot get his rights. The only way to enable the parties to get together on a reasonable basis is to give the party who has to deal with the complaint the widest possible powers to act in a reasonable way. That has been the idea in the drafting of this Clause. I believe it expresses in the most practical manner what was the general intention of the Committee, and that it is to be commended to the House as providing a real assistance to the work of slum clearance.

4.37 p.m.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: I have no doubt that the Minister, in proposing this new Clause, had the best of intentions, but I am convinced, particularly after hearing his arguments, that he has no idea whatsoever as to how it will work in practice in a large clearance scheme. I was surprised to hear the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris), who has undoubtedly had great experience in housing matters, advocating this proposal. Perhaps I could help the House with a personal experience. In my constituency there was recently a very large clearance scheme, and shopkeepers in the area, who under the Act of 1930 are entitled to compensation, at the discretion of the local authority, banded together and exerted without question, I will not say illegitimate pressure but very considerable pressure indeed. They were particularly fortunate, or unfortunate, in that the clearance scheme coincided with the by election in which I was returned to this House. During that election those shopkeepers, fearing that they would not get sufficient compensation from the London County Council, a fear which I think was quite unfounded, banded together, holding meetings and exerting very considerable pressure in the neighbourhood in an effort to exact promises from the candidates.
If that happens with the shopkeepers in the area, who, I think, are in quite a different category from those living outside—because their premises are going to be pulled down—what is going to be the situation when everybody in the locality who may consider that his shop has suffered damage as the result of the removal of the people will feel entitled to look to the local authority for compensation? It is an appalling prospect. I forget how many houses were involved in this particular scheme, but I suppose there was a population of several thousand. "Locality" not being defined, it would be possible for every shop keeper within a radius of a mile to prove without question that certain of his customers had disappeared and that therefore he had lost revenue and was entitled to compensation. I am certain that in this instance from 200 to 500 shops could put up some sort of claim for compensation.
From my experience of this and of other clearance schemes I know that a certain amount of temporary hardship may be inflicted, but I have never found any general dissatisfaction, or any general agitation that these people should receive compensation, and we shall be stirring up a tremendous amount of trouble fore very local authority which wants to undertake a clearance scheme if we make them subject to this pressure. I do not say that it is illegitimate pres sure, because the shopkeepers will think they are only asking for that to which they are entitled. It is the very vague ness of the proposition which is the danger. It would be better if it were possible to confine "locality" to a certain area, it would be better if it were possible to limit the amount of compensation to a certain formula—that would limit the difficulty and the agitation. As regards houses in the clearance area there is a certain understanding—anyhow in London—as to the basis of compensation. It is, roughly, the cost of removal and help towards acquiring a similar business somewhere else. But these proposals are vague. Are the shopkeepers to be paid compensation in respect of every penny they would have received as profit during the period when the houses were demolished; over what area is the new rule to apply; for what period; and for what type of shop?
Is the multiple store in the area to have a claim? The multiple shopkeeper will, in point of fact, be able to prove his claim better than anyone else. Probably three quarters of the shopkeepers who surround a slum clearance area in London do not keep accounts, and it will be quite impossible for them to give any proof of loss of trade. That is a great difficulty in the case of all compensation claims. The big shops do keep accounts, however, and they will be able to come forward with very definite statements about their losses, although the loss may, in fact, be due to entirely different cir cumstances—due to incompetence in management, or to all sorts of things. I say, therefore, that the very vagueness of these proposals make them doubly dangerous. The right hon. Gentleman said this proposal would help local authorities in their clearance schemes, but speaking with experience of the work of a local authority which has carried out far more clearance schemes than any other in the
country, I can assure him that so far from helping this Clause will seriously handicap local authorities.
A further danger arises from the principle which is being adopted here. We are opening a wide door to claims such as may not have occurred to the Minister. There are other people than shopkeepers who may be entitled to compensation for loss oftrade—publicans, bookmakers who carry on their trade in the area, and street newspaper sellers. If it is suggested that where a local authority carries out a public improvement every private interest that suffers is to be compensated out of public money—because that is the principle here stated, for the first time, as far as I know, in any Act of Parliament—where do we get? If a local authority makes a new bypass road it is perfectly certain that a garage or a petrol station on the road which it is proposed to bypass will lose considerable business. Is it proposed that the garage owner or the petrol station owner is to receive compensation out of public funds? It is opening the door immensely wide—most dangerously wide—in slipping this suggestion into this Bill. If people are to be de housed in a particular area because a factory is to be set up and the street is vacated, as sometimes happens, because the factory wants that particular space for carrying on its business, it is not suggested that that factory should compensate people in the area for loss of trade. I feel that this is a point slipped into the Bill without proper consideration. It is extremely dangerous. No such principle should be admitted by the House without the fullest consideration, and without it being much more carefully thought out. I strongly advise the House, in view of the circumstances, and in order to help slum clearance throughout the country, that the best thing to do would be to leave the Clause out of the Bill.

4.46 p.m.

Mr. PIKE: I should like to ask the Minister if he will go a little further in his definition of one or two words in the Clause. Members opposite have emphasised to the Minister the necessity for defining "a locality." I think per haps when this becomes an Act of Parliament, defining the words "a retail shop" will be much more important. Points were raised by the hon. Member
which showed clearly the difficulties into which local authorities may be forced. For myself, I would regard a retails hop as an establishment or place that was available for the purchase of goods de sired by the public either for immediate or future consumption. Is a public house a retail shop? That is a very important thing. I ask that question because many public houses have been left isolated as the result of clearances, and their weekly sales have fallen from 20 barrels of beer a week to one barrel, and from dozens and dozens of cases of whisky to half a case of whisky. The whole of the community upon which the licensed premises used to depend has been re housed in another area, and, as there have been no alternative sites for licensed houses on the new estate, naturally the trade which once existed no longer exists, and great loss has fallen not only on the brewery companies that own the houses but also upon the tenants who have depended upon them as a form of livelihood.
We must have a much more indisputable definition of the meaning of the retail shop. Will it embody any establishment that exists for the purposes of satisfying the needs of the community? If you are going to make flesh of one and fowl of the other you will put local authorities into a very difficult position. The principle of compensation is already accepted. Even the right hon. Gentleman opposite does not object to compensation. He does not even object to any form of compensation. His only formula is that it should be based on a period of six months to be laid down by the local authority. If compensation is admitted for one it must be admitted for all, so long as all come within the definition—in so far as the Minister can create a definition—ofretail shops. Before he asks the local authority to enforce this part of the Act he should make a clear definition of these terms.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. JANNER: I oppose the Amendment for reasons similar to those adduced by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris). At the same time I also want to ask the House to appreciate the difficulties that have arisen in the very district which my hon. Friend from North Lambeth (Mr. G. R. Strauss) is representing in this House. He has given us one side of the picture, but
be has forgotten to tell us details of cases which actually took place in his own district and which were, I have no doubt, brought to his notice at the time. There is a discretion to be exercised so far as the local authority is concerned, and public opinion is sufficiently strong to prevent any local authority exercising any discretion in the direction suggested by the hon. Member for North Lambeth, although he tried to reduce it to an absurd basis. The retail trader who has been trading for years in a particular locality, through no fault of his own is to be prevented from continuing his trade there, and he may be completely deprived of his livelihood. He may indeed be a man of very poor means. Again, he may be a man whose family have accumulated a certain amount in the course of their work and have sunk the whole lot into a business. Let me give an illustration of one of the most highly used retail businesses in industrial areas, namely, that of the fish fryer, a shopkeeper who caters for the population of our industrial districts to no small extent. In the first place, the London County Council have declared that that type of shop is a nuisance and ought not to be permitted in some of the areas where there are to be places for those who have been taken from one district and put into another area. My hon. Friend says it is not so. I should like a definite statement from him on that.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: I think the hon. Member has been misled. There was some agitation with regard to this important question some time ago. I think I am correct, although I am speaking from memory, in saying that the statement made by the housing department of the county council was that if there were any demand by the new tenants of houses put up by the London County Council for fish and chip shops the London County Council would have no objection to such a shop being built or incorporated in the new blocks.

Mr. JANNER: That is, if I may say so with respect to my hon. Friend, rather begging the issue. The position remains that if they are not being actually prohibited, in fact they are not being allowed, and shops are not being built for that purpose. There are no fish shops, and people are given to understand that they are not to be invited to open them.
Take the case of some of those people who are being dispossessed at present. One gentleman from Lambeth says this:
My family and myself have been fish fryers in Lambeth for L6years, and I under stand my shop is to be condemned under the contemplated clearance scheme. I have a 35year lease yet to run. I have given £300 for the property and have spent£200 on improvement. I was told not to apply for another shop when the new estate is built because fish frying is an offensive trade.
This is a statement which has been categorically made. Perhaps my hon. Friend will investigate these cases, be cause if they are proved to be correct it is highly important that they should be rectified. In another district a fryer brought a house and shop in 1926 for £776 and the authorities made him spend a further £319 to bring the shop into line with their requirements. The total cost to the fryer was thus £1,095. The housing committee of the council now pro pose to demolish his shop and house, and the fryer will not receive a penny compensation. They are not paying one penny compensation to any of the shop keepers whose businesses they have ruined. I would invite the attention of those who are opposing this particular Clause in the Bill to matters of that description.

Mr. JOHN WILMOT: May I ask the hon. Gentleman if he would be good enough to inform us whether the statements he has been reading are admitted facts or merely ex-parte statements?

Mr. JANNER: They were made presumably in a public paper. Even if one cannot give the exact names, they are quoted from a public paper, and my hon. Friend knows very well there are very large numbers of such cases. These are only one or two examples of a large number of cases where the same thing applies. If he has a desire to prevent them in the future, even if be thinks such a thing does not really exist now, let him give an opportunity in the Bill for the prevention of any matter of this description arising in the future. It is perfectly true these cases come under slum clearance schemes, but the same principle applies here. It is a question of what is going to happen to the small retail shopkeeper and so far as profiteering is concerned my hon. Friend knows very well that it is not a question which would be entertained by a local authority.
The idea that in a district where there is unwholesome overcrowding, which is to be relieved, some important multiple shop is going to be allowed to obtain compensation under this particular Clause, is in my view out of all reason. I do not think a local authority would dream of doing it, and, if they did, public opinion would be sufficiently strong to make them take other steps in order to remove this blot on what might otherwise have been a very fair escutcheon.
We believe that the small retailer is entitled to get a fair deal over this matter. The livelihood of himself, his family and hisdependants—in some cases they have given credit over many years which they cannot recover once they re move from the district—isendangered. My hon. Friends ought to change their minds and withdraw the Amendment they have put on the Paper.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. WI LMOT: I think it should be made clear to the House that some of the statements made, unwittingly I am sure, by the hon. Member who has just sat down, are statements of opinion and not of fact. There was in this particular case an attempt to exercise pressure, in my view some undue pressure, in the special circumstances with regard to this compensation in some clearance areas, and the statements which the hon. Gentleman has been reading are not statements from a public paper, in that they are statements from some official report or council minutes, but, if the hon. Member looks again at them, he will see that they are statements made in the heat of the moment to some industrious news paper reporter in search of hot local copy. The paper, I am told, is the "Fishing News," and in the circumstances I think the description I gave of an ex parte statement just about fits it. The hon. Member omitted to say what in fact happened about these people. Did they receive any compensation Were these claims met? Were they entirely brushed aside and not considered 7 I am not a member of the authority concerned, but it would have been only fair and proper to have stated that the claims made were met, and that the people who claimed compensation received compensation on a proper, equitable basis.

Mr. CURRY: Then why does the hon. Gentleman object to this provision?

Mr. WILMOT: The hon. Member seems to know what I am going to say before I say it. I have not so far raised the slightest objection to reasonable compensation in cases where compensation is equitable, and that is what happened in the cases my hon. Friend has quoted. In fairness to everybody concerned, it seems to me wrong to quote an ex parte statement of that kind in regard to cases which have been dealt with fairly, and met.

Mr. JANNER: Will the hon. Member tell me how much was paid to the various traders in the borough of Lambeth?

Mr. WILMOT: I really think, with all respect, that this House is now discussing a Clause in this Bill, and we had better leave that matter.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: rose—

Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER (Captain Bourne): I must remind hon. Members that we are not in Committee.

Mr. WILMOT: I certainly think the proper thing to do is to discuss the matter before the House. My objection to the Clause is not that it gives compensation where compensation is due, but that it is so loose and ill defined that it will open the door to all sorts of undesirable things. In considering a matter of this kind, surely the party opposite, for once, can divest themselves of their hatred of the Opposition. We are concerned in this matter to do justice to two parties—those who have to be paid and those who have to pay. Hon Members opposite, if this were a case of dealing with the poor, would be very careful to see that the local rates were properly safeguarded, but since it is a case of dealing with people whom they regard as their political friends, they are concerned much more with the liberality of the payment than with the safety and security of those who have to find the money. The Government, in putting down this Clause, lay an obligation up on the local authority.

Sir H. YOUNG: No.: 

Mr. WILMOT: The Minister says it does not lay an obligation. It lays a facility on them; it gives them what is at one remove an obligation and what will
in course of time quickly grow into an obligation to meet certain classes of claims. It is because the Clause is so loose and ill-defined that it is so dangerous. If the Government had offered to provide this money and had realised that this was a national obligation which the Minister was imposing, there might be something to be said for it, but it is a direct addition to the local rates, and we have to remember that the shopkeepers who receive this money will receive it at the expense of other shopkeepers who do not receive this money. So ill-defined is the Clause that it may well be that those who contribute the payments will not be as well off as the people who receive the payments.
Let us take the case of the multiple shop. Is there anything in this Clause which will preclude a perfectly proper claim by a branch of some great multiple combine? It is in.the locality. The population has been decreased. By an inspection of the book and by an affidavit of the accountant, it can be clearly shown that owing to the removal of the population the trade of that particular branch of that great national multiple concern has gone down. If the local authority is acting fairly and in the spirit of the Clause, that is, using those facilities which it has been given to make some compensation to some small shopkeepers, then it would be improper for it to discriminate against the branch of the multiple shop, because there is nothing in the Act which asks it to do so.
Suppose it does not discriminate, but does in fact allow the claim of that particular branch of the multiple shop. What is it doing? It is making a payment not to a branch but to a national concern, and since that national concern has branches in every locality and probably branches in every few streets, the population which has left this particular locality is probably buying its goods from another branch of the same concern in another place. Therefore, you might easily be paying compensation to one branch for an injury suffered by that branch, when as a matter off act some other branch somewhere else, or a group of branches, might be reaping the trade which No. 1 branch had lost. It might very easily happen. There is no legal discrimination against it, and it seems to me an example of the danger of putting loose compensation Clauses of this kind
into a Bill. The Minister provides this compensation out of the local rates, but it is not the practice of the Government to provide compensation for its Acts.
I have had a case recently brought to my attention which illustrates this point very well. The Minister of Transport erects traffic lights at the junction of four cross roads. My correspondent for many years has maintained and carried on a first-class garage and petrol business situated at the junction of the four roads. In a, night, traffic lights are erected on all four sides of him. It is now impossible for cars to stop at his house, be cause, if the traffic lights are red, they must remain that side of them. If they are green, they immediately proceed beyond the second row of lights on the other side of the crossroads. That man, in the course of two months, has changed from a prosperous tradesman into a bankrupt. He has hardly opened his till since the traffic lights were erected. It seems to me that man has a very serious and undeniable claim for compensation, if you are going to admit such claims as these, but his claim is against the Treasury—the Ministry of Transport.

Mr. HERBERT WILLIAMS: No, the local authority.

Mr. WILMOT: It would be improper, in my view, that the claim should lie against the local authority, for the local authority is not responsible for the scheme of traffic lights. It is only responsible for choosing those places where the traffic lights are put and the duty of the local authority is to choose those places not with regard to the trade of garages—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I think the hon. Member is developing his illustration rather too widely. We are not now discussing traffic regulations.

Mr. WILMOT: I bow to your Ruling, but I want to submit the point that the local authority must have regard to the primary consideration, the safety of the road. It arises again here, that you may easily, by these compensation pro visions, deflect the local authority from its primary duty of providing houses. There is just one other point which I think is very important. The hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) said that we on this side are very concerned with the
position of employés, but as soon as it comes to a little shopkeeper we regard him as a capitalist with whom we have no concern. That is entirely untrue. The Minister might easily be charged, with equal truth, with having regard to the employer but being oblivious of the interests of the employé. If a shop is forced to close by reason of action taken by the local authority under this Act, not only does the shopkeeper suffer; his trade departs, and so do his employés, but the compensation goes entirely to the employer, and the Minister is deaf and blind to the interests of, possibly, a large group of people who lose their employment through the very same cause.
It seems to me that there is a case, when public improvements in particular are undertaken, for compensation, but it is difficult to define the area in which that compensation can be given, since in redressing one hardship you may create a thousand others, as all the time, with the changing habits of society, there are continual changes in the interests of this, that or the other private person. The arterial road was an excellent case. Not only individual shopkeepers but whole villages—garages, teashops, public houses, every kind of trade that is done with people who pass through a town—have been suddenly by-passed and the stream of life has left them on one side. They find themselves thrown back into a kind of feudal state. There is no compensation for these people. It is very difficult to see how compensation could in fact be given. I would make this suggestion to the Minister:that he takes this Clause back, that he consults with the local authorities about it, that he comes to some arrangement whereby this compensation is paid out of national funds; that he endeavours to do justice not only to those whom he thinks are going to be injured, but also to those who have to provide the money and who may be in no better case themselves.

5.14 p.m.

Mr. SELLEY: It seems to me that the Clause, as drawn, is not wide enough to leave it within the discretion of the local authority. All these hypothetical cases about the multiple shop and even the public-house are not in practice going to
influence the mind of the local authority who have to deal with the clearance. I think these people will see clearly that if an area is to be re-developed they will reap some advantage. That is provided for in the Clause. I think the case chiefly in the minds of local authorities is that of what may be called the individual shopkeeper, who depends for the livelihood of himself and family upon the small of his shop. He is unable to wait for nine or 10months while the neighbourhood is being re-developed.
The local authorities are to use their discretion as to the amount of compensation in relation to the re-development that will take place. I cannot believe that that will be very hard upon the local authorities. Those who are anxious to get on with their job will see that justice is done. In our area, we are dealing with some of these people. We have even put up barrow stalls for costers who have been displaced. We have had no difficulty in dealing with these people, and we have tried to rehabilitate them in the areas from which we had displaced them. Let us leave the Sub-section where it is until we have a little experience of its working. I believe that it will work equitably to those who are disturbed, and that no very great hardship will be done to the local authorities. The new Sub section is merely a matter of defining the location and the time. I know how pernickety our hon. Friends are, and that they do not want anything running loose. In dealing with a very large clearance area, if you try to limit them to six months, by the time your limit is reached there will be a notice of a, further clearance for the area which you propose to compensate. If we leave the Sub-section where it is, I believe that it will work admirably, and that we shall find that we have taken a step forward, and have been just to all concerned.

5.18 p.m.

Mr. McENTEE: The Clause is far too loosely worded, and is very dangerous in its possibilities. I do not agree that it will apply, or that it is meant to apply, only to small shopkeepers, because there is no word limiting the Clause to the small shopkeeper. It applies equally to public houses and multiple shops. No lawyer in the House would dispute that a public house is a retail trading establishment. The publican sells by retail something which has been sold to him
by the manufacturer for consumption on or off the premises. He would un-doubtedly be entitled to compensation under the Clause if the local authority decided to give compensation. It is said that many multiple and other shops are at a distance from the spot from which the houses are to be removed. I know places within the London area, particularly where I live, in which the shops are not within a radius of 200 or 300 yards. People go to the end of their turnings and get a penny omnibus or tram to the shop ping area. If the shopkeepers in that area make a claim for compensation and the local authority agrees generally to consider such claims, they will be en titled to compensation because, although they may be a quarter of a mile away, their shops will be affected by the clearance order.
The Clause leaves it open for compensation to be paid. The Minister apparently thinks that it is good that the Clause should be optional, and that the local authorities need not work it unless they desire. Take two neighbourhoods which are side byside—for instance, my own borough of Walthamstow and the adjoining borough of Leyton. Assume that two somewhat similar clearance orders are made, one for Walthamstow and the other for Leyton, and that one borough decides to compensate and the other does not. Would that not create the greatest unfairness, in that two sets of people in precisely similar circum stances would receive different treatment? Would it not be infinitely fairer to say that compensation should be paid? The Minister is leaving it to the judgment of the local authority, but, in the interests of the people who will suffer most, it would be fairer to say that they shall be compensated in circumstances which can easily be defined.
There is no limit in regard to the time or to the amount of compensation under the Clause. In two neighbouring authorities one may adopt a high and the other a low standard of compensation, and there are possibilities of gross un fairness which ought to be removed from the Clause before we pass it. The Clause will operate very unfairly as between two local authorities who have an entirely different outlook. The Minister referred to areas where the population has materially decreased. What is "materially de-
creased" Some local authorities may say that 10 per cent. is not material and others may say that 10 per cent. is a very material decrease, and one would compensate while the other would not. The Clause is so loosely drawn that I am amazed that it should have been brought before the House by a Minister who is usually so precise in the matters he brings before us. Another point is that if a local authority is to compensate for removal from its area, are the shop keepers who get the extra trade in the area to which the people will have gone to pay higher rates to their local authorities, or to help to pay the compensation? The Clause bristles with in equalities, and I am certain that it will be most unfair.
The cost which will be imposed upon the local authorities who decide to adopt the Clause will be unfair also. If the Minister were anxious to see justice done to those who suffer, he should ensure that the nation compensated them, rather than the local authority. Local authorities will have to be governed by what the Minister's Department sometimes tells deputations, which is," You will have to cut your coat according to your cloth," or, in other words, "Your rates are so high that we cannot allow you to provide this social service." That is what I have often been told when visiting the Ministry of Health to ask for sanction to institute some service in our area. In this case the Minister tells the local authorities that they need not adopt the Clause unless they like, if they are poor or if they do not desire to pay compensation, because the Bill does not compel them to do so. Is that not grossly unfair to the people concerned In some areas a penny rate brings in a large sum of money, and it will be easy for the local authority to pay compensation.' In smaller areas, clearance will be on a smaller scale and the rate of compensation will be much higher in relation to the number of people to be compensated. In some poorer areas, no compensation will be paid because of the inability of the local authorities to do so, while in another area only a little distance away, the local authority will easily be able to afford to compensate, and may do so. The unfairness of the proposal is so obvious that I am surprised the Minister has brought it forward.
The Minister does not think that there will be any political pressure. His experience must be very limited in that direction. The hon. Member for North Lambeth (Mr. G. Strauss) gave an example under this heading, and I believe every other hon. Member could provide examples. I could adduce many examples, if I desired to do so. I might perhaps refer to the chambers of commerce. There are chambers of commerce in the cities, and they are very big undertakings, and the smaller towns like to imitate the big towns. In my locality the chamber of commerce consists to a large decree of very small shopkeepers, some of whom operate in the poorest areas. Chambers of commerce are very powerful institutions, and in my area they have, or they endeavour to have, very considerable influence. A chamber of commerce nearly always calls itself non political. The Clause will lead to very serious trouble for local authorities. There is nothing good in the wording of it, and the Minister ought to take it back and put into it some limit in regard to time and place. If compensation is to be operated at all, it should be compulsory upon all areas, and local authorities should be given guidance in the matter. In some cases the Ministry should assist the local authority to pay the compensation in respect of people who deserve to be compensated because of their loss.

Sir H. YOUNG: I wonder if I might appeal to the House to come to a conclusion on this Amendment? A common understanding has been arrived at that we should complete this stage of the Bill by half-past six. We have already had an informative discussion on this issue, and there are several other interesting issues still to be discussed.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. EDWARD WILLIAMS: I shall be glad to respond to the Minister's appeal, though I cannot understand why we should hurry over a matter of such importance. There seems to be no doubt in the mind of anyone in the House that the retailer, the small family man, who is deprived of his business through slum clearance, should receive compensation, but there is some difference of opinion as to who should pay that compensation, how it should be assessed, and the time that should elapse before it is paid. I
desire to protest against the reflections which some hon. Members cast upon local authorities whenever they have the opportunity. Whenever the question is one of payment, it seems to be considered that the local authority can at all times afford to make the payment, and I think that that idea should be protested against in this House. The Minister is endeavour ing to place upon the Statute Book a Measure with the final stages of which we are now dealing. The Bill will compel local authorities to do certain things, and, that being so, the Treasury ought to implement what is contained in the Bill. In other words, the compensation should be met by the Treasury, and not by those local authorities who are obliged by Act of Parliament to carryout the wishes of this House.
We never find this idea operating in the converse sense. There are areas in this country which are badly depressed because industries voluntarily move away to the coast in order to save transport expenses, or for other reasons of that kind. When that happens, the local authorities affected find their rates raised by shillings in the pound as a consequence. We have seen large iron, steel and coal companies moving from Dowlais to Cardiff, thereby causing an increase of 3s. or 4s. in the rate poundage. Small businesses are affected, and the rate payers are affected, but we never hear any suggestion from supporters of the Government that the industrialists who have caused these difficulties should compensate the authorities or the local trades people. It is unfair, too, to act as though the local authorities are responsible for the creation of slums. They are not the cause of the damage at all. The slums are due to landlordism. They are due to the fact that landlords endeavour to build as many houses—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better pursue that argument on some other occasion.

Mr. WILLIAMS: I have no desire to develop it beyond saying that, whenever anything of that kind is discussed in this House, the landlords are desirous that the local authorities should pay, and in that sense I protest against the statements and inferences that we hear from time to time. If the Minister is placing an obligation upon local authorities to
clear these houses, and if as a consequence retailers find their business impaired, the Minister, through the Treasury, ought to see that those persons are compensated by the Government, and not by the local authorities.

5.36 p.m.

Mr. GEORGE GRIFFITHS: As a Member who served on the Committee which considered this Bill for 20 days, I desire to say a few words. The Op position in the Committee did not oppose this Clause, but we did ask for some clearer definitions than are at present given in the Clause. I myself raised the question as to who was the retailer, and to-day we have had half a dozen definitions from all over the House. The hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. Pike) said that the publican had better be put in as a retailer, and, indeed, he is a retailer, and can put his case for compensation before the local authority because he is a retailer. Then the hon. Member for Whitechapel (Mr. Janner) says that he is only talking about the little man, but when the Act is on the Statute Book and comes before a court it is no use saying that the Minister of Health said so-and-so; all that is taken into account is what is stated in the Act.
A carriage and pair can be driven through this Clause on three very vital points. The first is the retailer. It is not only the licensee who might be in-chided. Some of my friends suggest that a bookmaker might get in, and, if he is licensed and is doing betting through the post, and if through the operation of the Bill he finds that he is losing money, he is a retailer from that stand point. In the second place, what is a locality? In some places you could have a retailer under this Clause living in another place altogether, but still being

in the locality. There are many parts of London where one side of the street is in District A, and the other side is in District B, where there may be a clearance order. If you take a few dozen people out of District B, arid transfer them somewhere else, is the retailer in District A to be able to claim from the local authority of District B while he is residing in District A? The Minister of Health did not bring out that definition. The word used is "locality," but, at the rate at which we are now going, we shall have a locality extending overseas. Distance has been obliterated. In Glasgow, Leeds and other places to-day people take a 2d. ride to do their shopping, and they might still be regarded as being in the locality, so that, if the retailer could show that he had suffered a loss, he would be able to claim.

In the third place, for how long is the loss to be sustained? It does not say. It simply speaks of the loss
which in their opinion he will thereby sustain.
The loss can go on to eternity; it can be a pension for life, as one of my hon. Friends has said. The retailer can go on sustaining that loss for 20, 30 or 40 years, and can put in his claim for it. We are not opposing the principle of the small shopkeeper being compensated, but we say that this Clause is so widely drawn that people can get compensation for losses from Heaven to Hell. We are bound to oppose it, not because we do not believe in the principle of the little retailer getting compensation, but be cause it will bring in other people who really should not get compensation at all.

Question put, "That the words pro posed to be left outstand part of the Bill."

The House divided: Ayes, 271; Noes, 49.

Division No. 224.]
AYES.
[5.43 p.m.


Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Dyke
Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel
Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.


Adams, Samuel Vyvyan T. (Leeds, W.)
Bernays, Robert
Burnett, John George


Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G.
Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman
Butler, Richard Austen


Albery, Irving James
Blinded, James
Cadogan, Hon. Edward


Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'k'nh'd)
Boulton, W. W.
Campbell, Vice-Admiral G. (Burnley)


Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir William (Armagh)
Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W.
Campbell-Johnston, Malcolm


Atholl, Duchess of
Bracken, Brendan
Caporn, Arthur Cecil


Bailey, Eric Alfred George
Braithwaite, J. G. (Hillsborough)
Carver, Major William H.


Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M.
Brass, Captain Sir William
Cautley, Sir Henry S.


Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley
Briscoe, Capt. Richard George
Cayzer, sir Charles (Chester, City)


Balfour, Capt. Harold (I. of Thanet)
Broadbent, Colonel John
Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)


Balniel, Lord
Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Cazalet, Capt. V. A. (Chippenham)


Barrie, Sir Charles Coupar
Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N. (Edgbaston)


Barton, Capt. Basil Kelsey
Brown, Brig.-Gen. H.C.(Berk., Newb'y)
Chapman, Col. R. (Houghton-le-spring)


Beaumont, Hon. R.E.B. (Portsm'th, C.)
Browne, Captain A. C.
Chapman, Sir Samuel (Edinburgh, S.)


Choriton, Alan Ernest Leofric
Janner, Barnatt
Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Jesson, Major Thomas E.
Reid, David D. (County Down)


Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.
Joel, Dudley J. Barnato
Reid, William Allan (Derby)


Colfox, Major William Philip
Johnston, J. W. (Clackmannan)
Renwrick, Major Gustav A.


Collins, Rt. Hon. Sir Godfrey
Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shield)
Rickards, George William


Conant, R. J. E.
Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose)
Rosbotham, Sir Thomas


Cook, Thomas A.
Kerr, Hamilton W.
Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)


Cooke, Douglas
Keyes, Admiral Sir Roger
Rothschild, James A. de


Cooper, A. Duff
Kimball. Lawrence
Runge, Norah Cecil


Courthope, Colonel Sir George L.
Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton
Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy)


Cranborne, Viscount
Lambert, Rt. Hon. George
Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)


Crooke, J. Smedley
Law, Sir Alfred
Russell, R. J. (Eddisbury)


Crookshank, Col. C. de Windt (Bootle)
Leech, Dr. J. W.
Rutherford, John (Edmonton)


Cross, R. H.
Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)


Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard
Levy, Thomas
Salmon, Sir Isidore


Curry, A. C.
Lewis, Oswald
Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Lindsay, Kenneth (Kilmarnock)
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)


Davies, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil)
Llewellyn-Jones, Frederick
Samuel, M. R. A. (W'ds'wth, Putney)


Davison, Sir William Henry
Lioyd, Geoffrey
Sassoon, Rt. Hon. Sir Philip A. G. D.


Dawson, Sir Philip
Locker-Lampson, Rt. Hn. G. (Wd. G'n)
Savery, Servington


Denman, Hon. R. D.
Loder, Captain J. de Vere
Selley, Harry R.


Dickie, John P.
Loftus, Pierce C.
Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.


Doran, Edward
Lovat Fraser, James Alexander
Shaw, Helen B. (Lanark, Bothwell)


Drewe, Cedric
Lumley, Captain Lawrence R.
Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar)


Duckworth, George A. V.
MacAndrew, Lieut.-Col. C. G.(Partick)
Shepperson, Sir Ernest W.


Dugdale, Captain Thomas Lionel
MacAndrew, Major J. O. (Ayr)
Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.)
MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Seaham)
Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Walter D


Dunglass, Lord
Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)
Smith, Sir Robert (Abdn & K'dine, C.)


Eady, George H.
McEwen, Captain J. H. F.
Smithers, Sir Waldron


Eales, John Frederick
McKeag, William
Somervell, Sir Donald


Eden, Rt. Hon. Anthony
McKie, John Hamilton
Somerville, Annesley A (Windsor)


Fills, Sir R. Geoffrey
Maclay, Hon. Joseph Paton
Soper, Richard


Elliston, Captain George Sampson
McLean, Major Sir Alan
Southby, Commander Archibald R. J.


Entwistle, Cyril Fullard
McLean, Dr. W. H. (Tradeston)
Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L.


Erskine Bolst, Capt. C. C. (Blackpool)
Magnay, Thomas
Spencer, Captain Richard A.


Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univ.)
Maitlend, Adam
Spender-Clay, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.


Evans, R. T. (Carmarthen)
Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)


Everard, W. Lindsay
Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)


Fleming, Edward Lascelles
Mander, Geoffrey la M.
Stones, James


Fox, Sir Gifford
Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M.
Stourton, Hon. John J.


Galbraith, James Francis Wallace
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.
Strauss, Edward A.


Ganzoni. Sir John
Marsden, Commander Arthur
Stuart, Lord C. Crichton-


Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton
Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir Murray F.


George, Megan A. Lloyd (Anglesea)
Meller, Sir Richard James (Mitcham)
Sugden. Sir Wilfrid Hart


Gibson, Charles Granville
Mellor, Sir J. S. P.
Tate, Mavis Constance


Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John
Mills, Sir Frederick (Leyton, E.)
Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford)


Glossop, C. W. H.
Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)
Thompson, Sir Luke


Gluckstein, Louis Halle
Milne, Charles
Thomson, Sir James D. W.


Glyn, Major Sir Ralph G. C.
Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)
Titchfield, Major the Marquess of


Goldie, Noel B.
Monsell, Rt. Hon. Sir B. Eyres
Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.


Grattan Doyle, Sir Nicholas
Morgan, Robert H.
Wallace, Captain D. E. (Hornsey)


Griffith, F. Kingslay (Middlesbro, W.)
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)
Wallace, Sir John (Dunfermline)


Guest, Capt. Rt. Hon. F. E.
Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univer'ties)
Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)


Gunston, Captain D. W.
Moss, Captain H. J.
Ward, Irene Mary Bewick (Wallsend)


Guy, J. C. Morrison
Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H.
Ward, Sarah Adelaide (Cannock)


Hales, Harold K.
Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth)
Watt, Captain George Steven H.


Hamilton, sir George (Ilford)
Nicholson, Rt. Hn. W. G. (Peterst'ld)
Wayland, Sir William A.


Hamilton, Sir R.W. (Orkney & Zetl'nd)
Nunn, William
Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour


Harbord, Arthur
O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh
Weymouth, Viscount


Harris, Sir Percy
Ormiston, Thomas
White, Henry Graham


Hartland, George A.
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William G. A.
Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)


Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes)
Orr Ewing, I. L.
Williams, Herbert G. (Croydon, S.)


Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)
Owen, Major Goronwy
Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir Arnold (Hertf'd)


Hellgers, Captain F. F. A.
Peake, Osbert
Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George


Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P.
Pearson, William G.
Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl


Herbert, Capt. S. (Abbey Division)
Peat, Charles U.
Wise, Alfred R.


Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller
Perkins, Walter R. D.
Withers, Sir John James


Hoare, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir S. J. G.
Petherick, M.
Womersley, Sir Walter


Holdsworth, Herbert
Peto, Geoffrey K. (W'verh'pt'n, Bilston)
Wood, Sir Murdoch McKenzie (Banff)


Hope, Capt. Hon. A. O. J. (Aston)
Pickthorn, K. W. M.
Worthington, Dr. John V.


Hornby, Frank
Pike, Cecil F.
Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'V'oaks)


Howard, Tom Forrest
Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.
Young, Ernest J. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Hudson, Capt. A. U. M.(Hackney, N.)
Procter, Major Henry Adam



Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries)
Pybus, Sir John
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Hunter, Capt. M. J. (Brigg)
Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles)
Sir George Penny and Sir Victor


Jackson, Sir Henry (Wandsworth, C.)
Ramsden, Sir Eugene
Warrender.


James, Wing.-Com. A. W. H.
Rea, Walter Russell



NOES.


Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South)
Buchanan, George
Daggar, George


Attlee, Clement Richard
Cape, Thomas
Davies, David L. (Pontypridd)


Banfield, John William
Cleary, J. J.
Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)


Batey, Joseph
Cove, William G.
Davies, Stephen Owen


Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)
Cripps, Sir Stafford
Dobbie, William




Edward, Charles
Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
Salter, Dr. Alfred


Gardner, Benjamin Walter
Lawson, John James
Smith, Tom (Normanton)


Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur
Leonard, William
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)


Grenlell, David Reel (Glamorgan)
Logan, David Gilbert
Thorne, William James


Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding)
Lunn, William
Tinker, John Joseph


Grundy, Thomas W.
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
Wast, F. R.


Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
McEntee, Valentine L.
Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)


Hicke, Ernest George
Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)
Williams, Dr. John H. (Lianelly)


Jenkins, Sir William
Mainwaring, William Henry
Williams, Thomas (York., Don Valley)


John, William
Milner, Major James
Wilmot, John


Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Paling, Wilfred



Kirkwood, David
Parkinson, John Allen
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—




Mr. Groves and Mr. D. Graham.

CLAUSE 85.—(Amendments of Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts.)

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH(Mr. Shakespeare): I beg to move, in page 63, line 8, after shall to insert:for the purposes of those Acts and of this section.

This is merely a drafting Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

CLAUSE 87.—(Fairwages.)

5.49 p.m.

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: I beg tomove, n page 64, line 11, at the end, to insert: "and
(b) except in so far as the Minister may, in any particular case, dispense with the observance of this paragraph, that the house is provided with a fixed bath in a bathroom.
This Amendment is put down as a result of a discussion in Committee, because it was felt that in these enlightened times we should put in statutory form what is the practice, that is, that in giving approval for new houses, a house should contain a fixed bath in a bathroom. All parties agreed to that general principle, but it was pointed out, and accepted again by all parties, that there were exceptional circumstances in which a suspensory power should be given to the Minister, as in the case, for instance, of the provision of a dwelling for aged per sons where there would not be the necessity for a fixed bath in a bathroom though there might be the necessity for a bath. With this explanation, I hope that the House will confirm this Amendment.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. T. SMITH: I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, in line 2, to leave out from the beginning, to "that," in line 3.
I agree that in the main this Amendment carries out what was promised when we discussed the matter in Committee. The House will know that it has
been the practice in some areas for baths to be provided without any bathroom, and the Amendment appears to make that practice a thing of the past. I thank the right hon. Gentleman and the Parliamentary Secretary for having put down the Amendment, but I am a little concerned about that part of it which deals with exceptions. If the Parliamentary Secretary can give me an assurance that the only kind of exception to be made is that which he has just quoted, I shall not have much of which to complain. I hope that there is no intention of making it possible for the Minister to dispense with the observance of this paragraph in any what may be called ordinary dwelling-houses. I can understand that, under a Bill of this character, where you provide flats and dwellings of that kind, there may be the need for some exceptions, but I should like an assurance that there is to be no exception in respect of the ordinary dwelling-house typical of the provinces. If that is so, I have no intention of pressing my Amendment to the Amendment.

5.52 p.m.

Mr. WEST: I beg to second the Amendment to the proposed Amendment.
At the same time, I wish to say that I appreciate the change which the Minister has inserted. I do not think that many Members of this House realise the great importance of it. It is the first time, I believe, in our legislation that it has been made compulsory to have a fixed bath in a bathroom. It is rather wonderful when you consider that 50. years ago not 5 per cent. of the houses of Great Britain had a bathroom of any kind. Forty years ago even Windsor Castle was without a bathroom, and it was not until 1900, so I am informed, that a bathroom was put into that very magnificent building. Indeed, in Kensington, where the aristocracy used to live, 90 per cent. of those great houses were built 60 years ago without a bathroom. It is incredible. Even to-day in London
more than 50 per cent. of the houses are still without a fixed bath in a bathroom. In 1900 it was an abnormality for the well-to-do to have a bathroom built in their houses in London. It is a great social advance to have a provision put into a Bill so that even the poorest of the working people shall have a bathroom, when one realises that a bathroom was a luxury for the rich 30 years ago. It is a very great advance that we now realise how extraordinarily important a bath room can be in the lives of the people from the point of view of cleanliness, and from amoral point of view. I congratulate the Minister upon his courage and foresight in putting this improvement in the Bill. I do not know what his dispensing power is to be, but I take it for granted that the Minister will allow exceptions to arise only in very abnormal cases.

5.56 p.m.

Sir H. YOUNG: I entirely agree with all that has been said by the hon. Member for North Hammersmith (Mr. West) about the importance of this being a social advance. I could not give an undertaking to the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. T. Smith) exactly in the words which he has suggested that the only exception could be that referred to by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary in respect of houses for old people. That was given only as an illustration, but I can give him an assurance which I am sure will satisfy him. It is intended that the provision in the Act shall be the normal provision, and that its observance shall only be dispensed within circumstances justified by exceptional conditions.

Mr. T. SMITH: After the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment to the proposed Amendment.

Amendment to the proposed Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Proposed words there inserted in the Bill.

CLAUSE 90.—(in Interpretation.)

The SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir Donald Somervell): I beg to move, in page 65, line22, at the end, to insert:
Apparatus 'means sewers, drains, culverts, watercourses, mains, pipes, valves, tubes, cables, wires, transformers, and other apparatus laid down or used for or in con-.
nection with the carrying, conveying, or supplying to any premises of a supply of water, water for hydraulic power, gas or electricity, and standards and brackets carrying streetlamps.
This definition is consequential upon the new Clause which the House has passed giving compensation to statutory undertakers, and it is necessary to define "apparatus" for the purposes of the Clause.

5.58 p.m.

Mr. H. WILLIAMS: I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, in line 3, after "premises," to insert "or any part thereof."
This Amendment is indirectly a compensation Amendment. The conjoint conference of public utility associations, at whose request I have tabled the Amendment to the proposed Amendment, take the view that, if there is compensation, it ought to cover the whole of the property of the public utility. As some of the property of the public utility is in fact inside the premises, and is not merely cables and all the rest of it out side, compensation ought to be extended to cover the whole of their property. That is the sole object of moving my Amendment, and I trust that I have made the matter clear.

Mr. LEVY: I beg to second the Amendment to the proposed Amendment.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: I think that the suggestion contained in the Amendment to the proposed Amendment which I have put upon the Order Paper—in line 5, at the end, to add:
but does not include any such apparatus lying within the curtilage of the premises.
—is covered by the words as they now stand, in which case I have no desire to move my Amendment, but I invite the Solicitor-General to be good enough to make the point clear.

5.59 p.m.

TheSOLICITOR-GENERAL: This point was discussed to some extent when the new Clause was under consideration. The Clause gives compensation to statutory undertakers whose apparatus is interfered with or removed by the local authority in carrying out their powers or making a deviation of streets. When the Clause was discussed in Committee the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) took the view that this was not really a proper
case for compensation. He said that if an electricity company laid its cables down a road, it took the risk of the road having to be stopped up or diverted. My hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams) took the opposite view and was grateful for the compensation offered in the Clause, but wanted to extend it to apparatus which one of the undertakers might have put inside the house. Now my hon. Friend the Member for North Lambeth (Mr. G. R. Strauss) constituency>wants to exclude any apparatus lying within the curtilage. Therefore, there is a. variety of propositions before the House. We think that we have come to a fair solution. This is a novel form of compensation, but we think that it is plainly just to provide the compensation with in the limits of the Clause. With regard to apparatus actually within the house, the risk was taken that the house might be pulled down, and while we sympathise with those who sustain losses in such circumstances, we did not think that it would be right to extend the Clause to cover such a case. So far as the curtilage is concerned, in our view apparatus within the curtilage may be included. I understand that the curtilage means the garden. The words in the Clause are "to the premises," and we think that those are the right words. It may be that in some cases the under takers' apparatus ends in the garden, or, it maybe, at the meter. We think that the words "to the premises" are the proper words to direct attention to the point at which the apparatus supplied by the undertakers normally ends and the domestic apparatus of the house begins. For these reasons, I am afraid that we cannot accept the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon.

Mr. H. WILLIAMS: I am very grateful for the explanation, and I beg to ask leave to withdrawmy Amendment to the proposed Amendment.

Amendment to the proposed Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Proposed words there inserted in the Bill.

6.4 p.m.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: I beg to move, in page 66, line 6, at the end, to insert:
Statutory undertakers' means any per sons authorised by an enactment or by an order, rule or regulation made under un
an enactment, to construct, work or carry on a railway, canal, inland navigation, dock, harbour, tramway, gas, electricity, water, or other public undertaking.
In our discussion upstairs it was pointed out that the words "statutory undertakers," were obsolete and taken from old Acts which had been prepared before the days of electricity, and that it was desirable that a new definition, up to date, should be substituted.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — FIRST Schedule.—(Number of persons permitted to use a house for sleeping.)

6.5 p.m.

Sir P. HARRIS: I beg to move, in page 68, line 7, to leave out from "house," to the endof the Schedule, and to insert:
the aggregate for all the rooms in the house obtained in accordance with the following conditions and table:

(1) In any dwelling-house containing more than two rooms, one room, being the living-room, shall not be counted in assessing the number of persons permitted to occupy the dwelling. Should any doubt arise as to which room is the living-room, then that room deemed by the inspector to be most suitable for the living-room shall be taken as such.
(2) The permitted number of persons in any dwelling-house shall in no case exceed the numbers for which the living-room will provide at least two hundred and fifty cubic feet of airspace for each adult, and at least one hundred and twenty-five cubic feet air space for each child;
(3) In computing the permitted number of persons in any dwelling no regard shall be had to any room having a floor area of less than fifty square feet.
(4) Subject to the above conditions, the number of persons for which each room may count shall be determined as follows:

Where the floor area of the room is—
The number of persons counted shall be—


150 square feet
2½


110 square feet
2


90 square feet
1½


65 square feet
1


50 square feet
½

Notes.—The space shall be calculated by multiplying the nett area by the height of the room, up to but not exceeding a height of 9feet."

I do not intend to keep the House more than a few minutes, because we discussed the proposed Amendment to the Schedule in Committee, and this is the second attempt to persuade the right hon. Gentleman to give a more generous definition of overcrowding. Far the first time we are attempting by Act of Parliament to get a universal overcrowding standard
applicable to the whole country. Our experience has not been in favour of applying a common standard. Our recent experience in regard to unemployment regulations does not seem to support the wisdom of such action'. On the contrary, the effect is that you apply a low standard and that is what this Schedule does. It applies a low standard as to working-class accommodation, and housing reformers throughout the country are most distressed. I would particularly call attention to paragraph (c) in the Schedule which provides that in a house of three rooms there maybe five persons, but I would remind the House and the right hon. Gentleman that two children under 10 only count as one person.

Take a typical dwelling in a working-class area with three rooms containing four adults and two children under 10. That would be six persons living in a three-roomed dwelling. One of those three rooms would almost certainly be the living room, where people cook and carry on their social life from one year's end to the other. Owing to the lack of facilities which exist at the present time in many cases in the average working-class dwelling the living room, sometimes called the kitchen, will contain two beds for two young children. When the children come from the elementary schools tired after their work, or from their play in the streets, they will have to sleep in the kitchen where perhaps father is having his supper and where mother is carrying on the ordinary house hold work. Those two children will have to share that room with adults. I suggest that after three years' effort to work out a solution of this great problem of over crowding it is unfortunate that in an Act of Parliament we are going to fix such a low standard. What we are trying to do in this Amendment is to exclude the living room in any ordinary dwelling for sleeping purposes, and that in counting the accommodation we should disregard one room in the house, the living room. To put beds in the living room, in the kitchen, is bad and a recognition of a very low standard which we ought not to recognize in an Act of Parliament. I hope the right hon. Gentle man will admit the error of his way and the badness of this Schedule and will
accept the very reasonable standard suggested in my Amendment.

6.10 p.m.

Sir FRANCIS ACLAND: I beg to second the Amendment.
We all know the difficulty of the Minister in this matter. It is that there is such an appalling amount of very serious overcrowding in some of our big towns that it will mean a tremendous lot of work in rehousing and building if we are to deal with the worst cases. Therefore, he has to put his standard low. As we are coming towards the end of the Bill I should not like the House to be under any misapprehensions as to the effect that the Bill is going to have in districts where force of circumstances have not compelled people to live under such terrible conditions as are usually found in London and other large centres but yet where there is a good deal of overcrowding under the ordinary existing standards in those districts. I refer more particularly to the country areas. I have been looking into the conditions in different parts of Devonshire and Corn wall and discussing with the housing committee of my county council, of which I happen to be chairman, the proposals of this Bill as regards particularly the county of Devon. The county medical officer has made inquiries as to the effect which the proposals in the Bill will have. I admit that in towns like Bradford, Barnstaple, Ilfracombe or Tiverton there are here and there in courts and yards, tenements and small houses where over crowding will take place, and in the countryside there will still be consider able overcrowding.
When we come to the proposals in the Bill and see how they will work extra ordinarily little will happen. I am not thinking now of the two or three roomed tenements but the ordinary country cottages of four or five rooms with a floor area of 130 square feet. I have looked into my own cottages and find that the more modern ones.are over that standard but the older ones come under the standard. Taking a house with an average floor space of 110square feet or more you get a standard of accommodation in a five roomed cottage without its being overcrowded. There might be 10persons over 10 years of age in such a cottage, and eight of such persons might be adults
and four might be children. Or there might be four adults in two families, each family with six children, living in one house. There could be four grown up people and 12 children under 10years of age and two babies. That would not be considered to bean overcrowded house and no proposal would be made for re placing it or abating the overcrowding.
That is an ordinary normal thing in country villages, and there is no doubt that that sort of case will occur and everybody concerned, including the medical officers, would say that it would be a very good thing if we could take one of these families out and leave the cottage to the other. Yet the Bill will not touch that case. Therefore, it seems to me that the practical proposal not to count the living room would make a tremendous difference, because it would mean a definite reduction in the number of people allowed to live in a house. We do not want to lay too heavy a stress on these matters at this time, when an agreement has been made as to the time that is to be occupied to-day, but I do want to impress on hon. Members who care for the country side the fact that this Bill is going to have extraordinary little effect there. When I raised this matter in Committee, the right hon. Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) said that he would accept my statement in regard to the district I knew, but that in parts of the Home Counties which he knew there had been such an invasion from the towns, cottages being bought up and tenants turned out of their homes, that the Bill would have a very good effect. So much the better; but the normal country district, thank goodness, is not being crowded out in that way by people from the towns. Everyone will agree that overcrowding exists which the Bill will not help very much unless the Amendment be accepted.

Mr. SPEAKER: There are several Amendments in the names of the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) and the hon. and gallant Member for South East Leeds (Major Milner) dealing with the housing standard, and I suggest that it would be better to discuss them all on the present proposal. If that is convenient to the House, that is the best way of doing it.

6.18 p.m.

Mr. GREENWOOD: I think the House will agree, in view of the limited time we have, that that would be the best arrangement, although we might want to have a Division on one or two of our proposals. I have spoken strongly against the standard of overcrowding in the Bill, and as we are now leaving the Report stage it is important that we should again emphasise the difficulties which many of us feel in regard to the standard as proposed in the Bill. We supported this Amendment in Committee, and have now put down a series of Amendments in order to improve the standard. The real difficulty I feel is that if we put into an Act of Parliament a standard which has a certain legal effect, under which landlords can be proceeded against, we are establishing in law a standard which may be anti-social in its effects. I have particulars here of a four-room house, a living room and three bedrooms. The living room has 150 square feet, one bedroom, 112 square feet, another bed room 91 square feet and another bedroom 51 square feet. It just creeps into the standard. Under the Schedule that house, without being regarded as overcrowded, could accommodate 7½ persons, seven adults and one child under 10 years of age, or two adults and 11 children under 10 years of age. It might, indeed, be a baby farm, with one widow and 13 children. In the case of these three-bedroom houses, quite apart from size, it would be possible to get hundreds of different variants and sizes of families, and to put 7½ persons into a house with three bedrooms is at the best a very low standard for the House to accept.
I realise the difficulties of the right hon. Gentleman in dealing with this aspect of housing, but the House would be well advised to accept the standard suggested by the Amendment, or the standard suggested by the Amendments in the names of hon. Members on this side, because once Parliament commits itself to the standard in the Bill, it will degrade and demoralise the people who are engaged on housing programmes whether under private enterprise or by local authorities. As we have thrashed out this matter in Committee, I should have hoped that the right hon. Gentle man would have been prepared to with draw the Schedule and introduce a new
one in another place on a higher standard than this, and, if the standard is not immediately practicable, allow a time limit to local authorities. That would be reasonable. It may bet hat the standard we should like cannot be attained in the next two or three years, but it would be much preferable to establish a standard which hon. Members can de fend in the country, even if we give a time limit to local authorities, rather than hang around the necks of hon. Members and local authorities a standard of overcrowding of which this country will be ashamed within the next two years. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will act reasonably. I am certain that hon. Members opposite realise as much as we do that this particular proposal to establish in arithmetical terms a standard of overcrowding is a dangerous one, and that in this new experiment it would be far better not to make a close definition of overcrowding as is proposed by the Schedule.

6.22 p.m.

Sir H. YOUNG: I certainly cannot think of any proposal less attractive than the one last made by the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood). I cannot imagine any proposal which would so disappoint the legitimate expectations of the country as a whole that something practical was going to be done to deal with overcrowding, as that we should lay down a standard which is incapable of realisation, and, on reflection, I think the right hon. Member will agree that it is far better to pass a Bill which we can make effective at once. Through out all the long-proceedings on the Bill the Government have resisted any increase in the standard as they have also resisted any reduction in the accommodation. The reason for that is that the standard inserted in the Bill, after the most prolonged and careful inquiry of the housing position in the country through all the available witnesses and evidence, is the practical standard which is capable of being realised by progressive action now, according to the methods designed by the Bill. It is a standard which it is possible to achieve as a penal standard, and I must emphasise that condition.
The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) has re-
ferred to the danger of national standards. I agree, but is not the greatest danger that of having a standard which is too high to be applicable? We must beware particularly of that danger. I would emphasise the difference between the penal standard and there housing standard. The right hon. Member for Wakefield says that we should not put a standard into law which is not the ideal we want. This is not the only standard; we have another standard, are housing standard. All rehousing work done, all new accommodation provided, will be pro vided not on this penal minimum standard but on the rehousing standard, which is higher. We must realise that the standard we are now discussing is nothing more or less than a penal standard which is to apply to all the oldest and worst housing accommodation in the country, and must also have clearly in our minds that we are working towards the rehousing standard laid down by law. We are collecting as it were behind us a kind of fortification, beyond which we are not going in relation to the penal standard of accommodation applicable to old and bad housing accommodation. With regard to the anomalies referred to by the right hon. Member, my impression is that they will not work out just as he suggested, if he considers the effect of the provisions in the Bill relating to the size of rooms, the separation of the sexes and the provision that local authorities can excuse a room whichis not habitually used as a sitting room.
Let me turn to the interesting observations made by the right hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir F. Acland) on the subject of the rural population. As he would expect, I cannot accept his statement that the penal standard in the Bill will not come down on a great deal of accommodation in rural areas. According to my information and the statistics available to me, there is a very substantial amount of overcrowding in rural areas which will fall below the penal standard, and I understand that the right hon. Gentleman with his usual can dour recognises that this is so. But he says that there are areas in which the state of accommodation comes just above the standard in the Bill, but which never the less should be looked upon as over crowding and unsatisfactory. I agree. I accept the testimony of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to the part of the
country with which he is so well acquainted; there are such conditions, but I say that if they are so bad that they fall below the standard then, if you consider that the men, women and children in these houses enjoy more air, more space and freer exercise than the people in the towns, you have conditions which are decidedly better than those with which it is imperative we should deal in the large city areas.
I do not think that the right hon. Member for North Cornwall made allowances for the effect of the sex separation clause, which will bring within the net of these reforms many cases which would not come in merely under the provisions with regard to space. But when we are considering the enormous volume of work which we are going to throw upon the housing administration of the country in dealing with overcrowding, I think we may be content to leave, for the present at any rate, such areas as those to which reference has been made, where the conditions are admittedly by no means so bad as in the urban areas. I repeat now what I said with profound conviction on a previous occasion, that if you are going to make this Bill effective from the word "Go," you must have a standard of general application and a standard upon which you can base widespread practical efforts at once. I hope and believe that when we have gone forward with the great work of providing additional accommodation, as the standards are raised at a future date some successor of mine will be able to stand at this Box and say that the time has come for the enactment of a general increase in the penal standard of accommodation.

6.32 p.m.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: I do not want to say anything with regard to the general standards laid down under Schedule 1. But I want to say a few words on one point which appears to rue to be very important indeed. Throughout the discussions of the Bill the Minister has seemed to be under the impression' that in laying down over crowding standards consideration need only be given to the area of the rooms as measured in square feet. I suggest that a very important factor in any standard of overcrowding is the height of the room, and that it is as important as the area of the room. That is ignored in this Schedule. In other
words it is not only a problem of square feet; it is a problem of cubic feet just as much. As we know, there are all over the country large numbers of houses which have been converted from occupation by one family and are now being used by two or three families, and it is a very common thing for one family to live in the attics of an old house in which most of the rooms haves loping roofs and the average height of the rooms is well below that of the normal habit able room in which we desire everyone to live. I have therefore put on the Paper an Amendment which provides that the height factor should be taken into consideration.
The proposal I make is certainly reason able, and I am not certain that it is stringent enough. It is that the average height of the room should be measured. Where it falls below eight feet the area of the floor should in the calculations be increased by a similar proportion. In effect, we say that you allow two people to sleep in a room which is 110 square feet, and if the room is low and one portion of it may be seven feet or six feet high, then instead of insisting that there should be 110square feet for these two people there should be more square feet to compensate for the lack of height. The definite proposal is that where the height of a room is found to be seven-feet six, or six inches below eight feet, the area of the floor space should be in creased from 110 square feet to 127 square feet as space in which two people can sleep. It may sound complicated, but in practice it works out very simply indeed. I do not insist on this formula, but what I do insist is that in laying down any standard of overcrowding, penal or other wise, the height factor should betaken into consideration. No standard is a fair or useful standard without it and, although the Minister may say that he can deal with it afterwards by regulation, we contend that if the House is laying down a standard for overcrowding in this Bill, it should be a complete standard, and that most definitely the height factor should be taken into account. I hope that my Amendment will be accepted later, or that the Minister will give adequate reason for not accepting it.

6.36 p.m.

Mr. WEST: We are discussing what I believe to be one of the most important parts of the Bill, dealing with over crowding. In some of the London divisions, for example, in Paddington and Kensington, we have what I can only describe as shocking death and disease rates, and all the experts say that the principal cause is overcrowding. If I understood the Minister aright, in rejecting this improvement of the overcrowding yardstick he used the argument that he does not regard the Schedule as pro viding an ideal standard, but that the chief point in its favour is that it is capable of realisation now. If the Minister believes that this standard is going to be realised almost immediately I am certain he is going to be a bitterly disappointed man in the near future. I do not believe that the standard will be realised in London in the next five years, and I do not think that anyone else who has studied London housing conditions believes it either.
I represent one of the better divisions in London, neither very poor nor wealthy, a division inhabited mainly by the best type of working-class people. In North Hammersmith where, generally speaking we have no slums, a recent survey has shown that there are more than 20,000 people living in overcrowded conditions. To remedy the overcrowding in this better-off London division, 4,000to 5,000 new houses or flats would be required. No one thinks that the conditions are going to be remedied in the next four or five years. But if we approve of the better yardstick, if we put in a more reasonable standard for determining overcrowding, I agree that it is going to postpone the amelioration perhaps another year. Personally, if I have to choose between waiting five years for this low standard to conquer over crowding and waiting six or seven years for a reasonable standard, I would rather wait a year longer for a decent social yardstick than have this second-rate and very poor standard within five years.

Mr. LEVY: Is not the effect of the Amendment entirely to alter the measurement from, a superficial basis to a cubic basis?

Mr. WEST: There are several factors. If the hon. Member will read the series of Amendments on the Paper he will see
that they provide for a general improvement and lifting of the standard. In West London, I dare say, the average tenement or home is a three-roomed flat containing a kitchen, a living room and one bedroom. Under the standard in this Schedule in that small flat you could have a man, his wife and seven children, and that would be perfectly legitimate. No one proposes, I presume, putting children in a kitchen to sleep. I know that in the North of England most people regard sleeping in a living room as wrong and anti-social. But even using the living room and the bedroom for sleeping in this typical London flat, it is obviously a shockingly low standard that cannot be justified by any thinking Member of this House.

6.43 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE: I would refer again to the rural aspect of the problem, which has not been dealt with adequately so far. We in the country do not approve entirely of very large rooms. One reason is that they are extremely cold and cold is worse for health than lack of cubic feet. We have tried out a great many different kinds of cottages in the country, and those with low roofs are generally more popular than those with high roofs, because they do not cause chills, and on the whole I think the health of the inhabitants is better in the cottages with low roofs. I prefer a square foot basis to a cubic foot basis. The Amendment suggests the wrong principle for the country districts. Health in the country could be helped more by open windows. If the Amendment had concentrated on window space there would have been far more reason init. On the east coast of Lincolnshire if you concentrated on more cubic space you would get worse health than if you concentrated on large floor space, with perhaps sloping roofs, but plenty of window space. I shall oppose the Amendment.

6.44 p.m.

Mr. CHARLES WILLIAMS: At least one Conservative might say something on the factor of the total cubic space of a room. We are laying down from absolutely necessity a very low standard, and a mere floor standard is not sufficient where you have sloping roofs. I make this request to the Minister. If the insertion of such a standard as we might desire is going to do the Bill any harm,
or if it is hopeless to carry out such a standard, then, of course, he cannot put it into the Bill; but would it not be possible, in another place, to have some figure inserted which will make it essential to have a certain cubic capacity for every person? I realise that we are laying down a certain standard in the Bill, apart from the height of the room, and I welcome the fact and I would ask the Minister not to pay any heed either to members of the Socialist party or to members of the Liberal party who ask him to put off this reform for a year or two. It has been put off quite often enough already by these procrastinators, and I am glad that the Government are proceeding, in spite of these attempts by their opponents to induce them to continue delaying it.

Sir P. HARRIS: I have not done so.

Mr. WILLIAMS: The hon. Baronet is not the only person who speaks on those subjects. Although we accept the proposal in the Bill it is not all that we would wish but apparently it is the best practical measurement that we can have at the present time. We accept it as a basis but we hope that as the years go on and as houses of the worst type are cleared away, it will be found possible to extend that basis. It could be done quite simply and easily by a short amend

ing Measure. In two or three years time we hope that it may befound desir able to apply a higher standard to the country as a whole.

6.46 p.m.

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: I wish to reply to one point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) in order to clear up a misunderstanding on this point which may be exercising the minds of hon. Members. The House will realise that we have long resisted prescribing the height of a room. We take the view that a room should be of such a height as to give reasonable ventilation and air and if it is not of that height that the room should be closed altogether. We take powers in the Bill to close rooms which fail obviously to give enough air and ventilation. On the question of the sloping roof, in Clause 6 (4) we take powers to prescribe the proper method of the compilation of the floor space of a room in a case where the ceiling slopes down to four feet or five feet.

Question put, "That the words pro posed to be left out to '2,' inline 24, stand part of the Bill."

The House divided: Ayes, 224; Noes, 69.

Division No. 225.]
AYES.
[6.50 p.m.


Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G.
Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)
Glossop, C. W. H.


Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'k'nh'd)
Chapman, Col. R.(Houghton-le-Spring)
Gluckstain, Louis Halle


Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent)
Chapman, Sir Samuel (Edinburgh, S.)
Goldie, Noel B.


Alien, Lt.-Col. Sir William (Armagh)
Clarry, Reginald George
Gower, Sir Robert


Atholl, Duchess of
Cobb, Sir Cyril
Grattan Doyle, Sir Nicholas


Bailey, Eric Alfred George
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.
Grenfell, E. C. (City of London)


Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M.
Colfox, Major William Philip
Gritten, W. G. Howard


Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley
Collins, Rt. Hon. Sir Godfrey
Gunston, Captain D. W.


Balfour, Capt. Harold (I. of Thanet)
Colville, Lieut.-Colonel J.
Guy, J. C. Morrison


Barrie, Sir Charles Coupar
Cook, Thomas A.
Hacking, Ht. Hon. Douglas H.


Barton, Capt. Basil Kelsey
Cranborne, Viscount
Hales, Harold K.


Beaumont, Hon. R.E.B. (Portsm'th. C.)
Crooke, J. Smedley
Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)


Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel
Crookshank, Col. C. de Windt (Bootle)
Harbord, Arthur


Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman
Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard
Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes)


Blindell, James
Culverwell, Cyril Tom
Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)


Bossom, A. C.
Davison, Sir William Henry
Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M.


Boulton, W. W.
Denman, Hon. R. D.
Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.


Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W.
Dickie, John P.
Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P.


Braithwaite, J. G. (Hillsborough)
Doran, Edward
Herbert, Capt. S. (Abbey Division)


Brans, Captain Sir William
Drawe, Cedric
Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Watler


Briscoe, Capt. Richard George
Duckworth, George A. V.
Hore-Belisha, Leslie


Broadbent, Colonel John
Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.)
Hornby, Frank


Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Dunglass, Lord
Howard, Tom Forrest


Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'ld., Hexham)
Eady, George H.
Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.)


Brown, Ernest (Leith)
Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey
Hume, Sir George Hopwood


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H.C.(Berks., Newb'y)
Elliston. Captain George Sampson
Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries)


Browne, Captain A. C.
Entwistle, Cyril Fullard
Hunter, Capt. M. J. (Brigg)


Buchan Hepburn, P. G. T.
Erskine-Bolst, Capt. C. C. (Blk'pool)
Inskip, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas W. H.


Burnett, John George
Essenhigh, Reginald Clare
Jennings, Roland


Burton, Colonel Henry Walter
Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst
Jasson, Major Thomas E.


Cadogan, Hon. Edward
Fleming, Edward Lascelles
Joel, Dudley J. Barnato


Campbell-Johnston, Maicolm
Fremantle, Sir Francis
Johnston, J. W. (Clackmannan)


Caporn, Arthur Cecil
Ganzonl, Sir John
Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)


Carver, Major William H.
Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton
Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose)


Cautley, Sir Henry S.
Gibson, Charles Granville
Kerr, Hamilton W.


Cayzer, Sir Charles (Chester, City)
Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John
Kimball, Lawrence


Knox, Sir Alfred
Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H.
Southby, Commander Archibald R. J.


Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton
Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth)
Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L.


Lambert, Rt. Hon. George
O'Connor, Terence James
Spenser, Captain Richard A.


Law, Sir Alfred
Ormiston, Thomas
Spender-Clay, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.


Leech, Dr. J. W.
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William G. A.
Spent, William Patrick


Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Pearson, William G.
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)


Levy, Thomas
Peat, Charles U.
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)


Lewis, Oswald
Penny, Sir George
Stewart, J. Henderson (File, E.)


Liddall, Walter S.
Perkins, Walter R. D.
Stones, James


Lindsay, Kenneth (Kilmarnock)
Petherick, M.
Storey, Samuel


Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest
Peto, Geoffrey K.(W'verh'pt'n, Blist'n)
Stourton, Hon. John J.


Llewellin, Major John J.
Pike, Cecil F.
Strauss, Edward A.


Lloyd, Geoffrey
Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.
Strickland, Captain W. F.


Locker-Lampson, Com. O. (H'ndsw'th)
Procter, Major Henry Adam
Stuart, Lord C. Crichton


Loder, Captain J. de Vere
Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles)
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir Murray F.


Loftus, Pierce C.
Ramsden, Sir Eugene
Tate, Mavis Constance


Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander
Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)
Thomas, James P. L, (Hereford)


MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Seaham)
Reid, David D,(County Down)
Thompson, Sir Luke


Macdonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness)
Reid, William Allan (Derby)
Thomson, Sir James D. W.


Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)
Rickards, George William
Titchfield, Major the Marquess of


McKie, John Hamilton
Robinson, John Roland
Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement


Maclay, Hon. Joseph Paton
Rosbotham, Sir Thomas
Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.


McLean, Major Sir Alan
Ress Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)
Wallace, Sir John (Dunfermline)


McLean, Dr. W. H. (Tradeston)
Runge, Norah Cecil
Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)


Magnay, Thomas
Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy)
Ward, Sarah Adelaide (Cannock)


Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest
Russell, R. J.(Eddisbury)
Warrender, Sir Victor A. G.


Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M.
Rutherford, John (Edmonton)
Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour


Margeseon, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.
Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liv'rp'l)
Wells, Sydney Richard


Marsden, Commander Arthur
Salmon, Sir Isidore
Weymouth, Viscount


Mason, Col. Glyn K. (Croydon, N.)
Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)
Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)


Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John
Savery, Servington
Wills, Wilfrid D.


Mellor, Sir J. S. P.
Selley, Harry R.
Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George


Mills, Sir Frederick (Leyton, E.)
Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.
Winter-ton, Rt. Hon. Earl


Mills, Major 1. D. (New Forest)
Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar)
Wise, Alfred R.


Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)
Shepperson, Sir Ernest W.
Worthington, Dr. John V.


Moreing, Adrian C
Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John
Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'V'noaks)


Morgan, Robert H.
Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Walter D.



Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)
Somervell, Sir Donald
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univer'ties)
Somerville, D. G. (Willesden, East)
Major George Davies and Captain


Moss, Captain H. J.
Soper, Richard
Hope.


NOES.


Acland, Rt. Hon. sir Francis Dyke
Griffith, F. Kingsley (Middlesbro', W.)
Mander, Geoffrey le M.


Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South)
Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding)
Milner, Major James


Attlee, Clement Richard
Groves, Thomas E.
Owen, Major Goronwy


Banfield, John William
Grundy, Thomas W.
Paling, Wilfred


Bernays, Robert
Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Parkinson, John Allen


Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)
Hicks, Ernest George
Roberts, Aled (Wrexham)


Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)
Holdsworth, Herbert
Salter, Dr. Alfred


Buchanan, George
Janner, Barnett
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)


Cape, Thomas
Jenkins, Sir William
Smith, Tom (Normanton)


Cleary, J J.
John, William
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)


Cocks, Frederick Seymour
Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shields)
Thorne, William James


Cove, William G.
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Tinker, John Joseph


Daggar, George
Kirkwood, David
West, F. R.


Davies, David L. (Pontypridd)
Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
White, Henry Graham


Davits, Rhys John (Westhoughton)
Lawson, John James
Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)


Davies, Stephen Owen
Leonard, William
Williams, Dr. John H. (Llanelly)


Dobbie, William
Llewellyn-Jones, Frederick
Williams, Thomas (York, Don Valley)


Edwards, Charles
Logan, David Gilbert
Wilmot, John


Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univ)
Lunn, William
Withers, Sir John James


Evans, R. T. (Carmarthen)
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
Wood, Sir Murdoch McKenzie (Banff)


Gardner, Benjamin Walter
McEntee, Valentine L.
Young, Ernest J. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)



Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur
Mainwaring, William Henry
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Grenfell, David Roes (Glamorgan)
Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot
Mr. Walter Rea and Sir Percy




Harris.

Mr. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, in page 68, line 24, column 2, to leave out "2," and to insert "1."

Question put, "That '2,' stand part of the Bill."

The House divided: Ayes, 239; Noes, 53.

Division No. 226.]
AYES.
[6.58 p.m.


Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P.G.
Balfour, Capt. Harold (I. of Thanat)
Bossom, A. C.


Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'k'nh'd)
Barrie, sir Charles Coupar
Boulton, W. W.


Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent)
Barton, Capt. Bull Kelsey
Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W.


Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir William (Armagh)
Beaumont, Hon. R.E.B. (Portun'th. C.)
Braithwaite, J. G. (Hillsborough)


Atholl, Duchess of
Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel
Brass, Captain Sir William


Bailey, Eric Alfred George
Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman
Briscoe, Capt. Richard George


Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M.
Blindell, James
Broadbent, Colonel John


Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P
Procter. Major Henry Asam


Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)
Herbert, Capt. S. (Abbey Division)
Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles)


Brown, Ernest (Laith)
Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller
Ramsden, Sir Eugene


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H.C.(Berks., Newb'y)
Holdsworth, Herbert
Rea, Walter Russell


Browne, Captain A. C.
Hore-Belisha, Leslie
Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)


Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T
Hornby, Frank
Reid, David D. (County Down)


Burnett, John George
Howard, Tom Forrest
Reid, William Allan (Derby)


Burton, Colonel Henry Walter
Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.)
Rickards, George William


Cadogan, Hon. Edward
Hume, Sir George Hopwood
Roberts, Aled (Wrexham)


Campbell-Johnston, Malcolm
Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries)
Robinson, John Roland


Caporn, Arthur Cecil
Hunter, Capt. M. J. (Brigg)
Rosbotham, sir Thomas


Carver, Major William H.
Inskip, Rt. Hon. sir Thomas W. H.
Ross, Ronald D.


Cautley, Sir Henry S.
Jennings. Roland
Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridga)


Cayzer, Sir Charles (Chester, City)
Jesson, Major Thomas E.
Rothschild, James A. de


Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)
Joel, Dudley J. Barnato
Runge, Norah Cecil


Cazalet, Capt. V. A. (Chippenham)
Johnston, J. W. (Clackmannan)
Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy)


Chapman, Col. R.(Houghton-le-Spring)
Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shields)
Russell, R. J. (Eddisbury)


Chapman, Sir Samuel (Edinburgh, S.)
Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)
Rutherford, John (Edmonton)


Clarry, Reginald George
Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose)
Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)


Cobb, Sir Cyril
Kerr, Hamilton W.
Salmon, Sir Isidore


Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.
Kimball, Lawrence
Salt, Edward W


Colfox, Major William Philip
Knox, sir Alfred
Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)


Collins, Rt. Hon. Sir Godfrey
Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)


Colville, Lieut.-Colonel J.
Lambert, Rt. Hon. George
Savery, Servington


Cook, Thomas A.
Law, Sir Alfred
Selley, Harry R.


Cranborne, Viscount
Leech, Dr. J. W.
Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.


Crooke, J. Smedley
Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar)


Crookshank, Col. C. de Windt (Bootle)
Levy, Thomas
Shepperson, Sir Ernest W.


Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard
Lewis, Oswald
Simon, Rt. Hon. sir John


Culverwell, Cyril Tom
Liddall, Walter S.
Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Walter D.


Davison, Sir William Henry
Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest
Somervell, Sir Donald


Denman, Hon. R. D.
Llawellin, Major John J.
Somerville, D. G. (Willesden, East)


Dickie, John P,
Llewellyn-Jones, Frederick
Soper, Richard


Doran, Edward
Lloyd, Geoffrey
Southby, Commander Archibald R. J,


Drewe, Cedric
Locker, Lampson, Com. O. (H'ndsw'th)
Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L.


Duckworth, George A. V.
Loftus, Plerce C.
Spencer, Captain Richard A.


Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.)
Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander
Spender-Clay, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.


Dunglass, Lord
Macdonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness)
Spens, William Patrick


Eady, George H.
Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)


Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey
McKeag, William
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)


Elliston, Captain George Sampson
McKie, John Hamilton
Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)


Entwistle, Cyril Fullard
Maclay, Hon. Joseph Paton
Stones, James


Erskine-Bolst, Capt. C. C. (Blackpool)
McLean, Major Sir Alan
Storey, Samuel


Essenhigh, Reginald Clare
McLean, Dr. W. H. (Tradeston)
Stourton, Hon. John J.


Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univ.)
Magnay, Thomas
Strauss, Edward A.


Evans, R. T. (Carmarthen)
Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest
Strickland, Captain W. F.


Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst
Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot
Stuart, Lord C. Crichton-


Fleming, Edward Lascelles
Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M.
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir Murray F,


Foot, Dingle (Dundee)
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.
Tate, Mavis Constance


Fremantle, Sir Francis
Mason, Col. Glyn K. (Croydon, N.)
Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford)


Ganzoni, Sir John
Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John
Thompson, Sir Luke


Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton
Mellor, Sir J. S. P.
Thomson, Sir James D. W.


Gibson, Charles Granville
Mills, Sir Frederick (Leyton, E.)
Titchfield, Major the Marquess of


Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John
Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)
Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement


Glossop, C. W. H.
Mitchell, Sir W. Lana (Streatham)
Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.


Gluckstein, Louis Halle
Moreing, Adrian C.
Wallace, Sir John (Dunfermline)


Gower, Sir Robert
Morgan, Robert H.
Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)


Grattan-Doyle, Sir Nicholas
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)
Ward, Saran Adelaide (Cannock)


Grenfell, E. C. (City of London)
Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univer'ties)
Warrender, Sir Victor A. G.


Griffith, F. Kingsley (Middlesbro'. W.)
Moss, Captain H. J.
Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour-


Gritton, w. G. Howard
Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H.
Wells, Sydney Richard


Guinness, Thomas L. E. B.
Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth)
Weymouth, Viscount


Gunston, Captain D. W.
O'Connor, Terence James
White, Henry Graham


Guy, J. C. Morrison
Ormiston, Thomas
Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)


Hacking, Rt. Hon. Douglas H.
Ormsby-Gore. Rt. Hon. William G. A.
Wills, Wilfrid D.


Hales, Harold K.
Owen, Major Goronwy
Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl


Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)
Pearson, William G.
Wise, Alfred R.


Hanbury, Cecil
Peat, Charles U.
Wood, Sir Murdoch McKenzie (Banff)


Harbord, Arthur
Penny, Sir George
Worthington, Dr. John V.


Harris, Sir Percy
Perkins, Walter R. D.
Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'v'noaka)


Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes)
Petherick, M.
Young, Ernest J. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)
Peto, Geoffrey K. (W'verh'ptn, Bilst'n)



Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M.
Pike, Cecil F.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.
Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.
Major George Davies and Captain Hope.


NOES.


Acland, Rt. Hon. sir Francis Dyke
Cape, Thomas
Dobbie, William


Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South)
Cleary, J. J.
Edwards, Charles


Attlee, Clement Richard
Cocks, Frederick Seymour
Gardner, Benjamin Walter


Banfield, John William
Cove. William G.
Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan)


Bernays, Robert
Dagger, George
Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding)


Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)
Davies, David L. (Pontypridd)
Grundy, Thomas W.


Brown, c. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)
Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)
Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)


Buchanan, George
Davies, Stephen Owen
Hicks, Ernest George




Janner, Barnett
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
Thorne, William James


Jenkins, sir William
McEntee, Valentine L.
Tinker, John Joseph


John, William
Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)
West, F. R.


Janes, J. J. (West Ham, Silvertown)
Mainwaring, William Henry
Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)


Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Mander, Geoffrey le M.
Williams, Dr. John H. (Lianelly)


Kirkwood, David
Milner, Major James
Williams, Thomas (York, Don Valley)


Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
Paling, Wilfred
Wilmot, John


Lawson, John James
Parkinson, John Allen



Leonard, William
Salter, Dr. Alfred
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Logan, David Gilbert
Smith, Tom (Normanton)
Mr. D. Graham and Mr. Groves.


Lunn, William
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)

7.8 p.m.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: I beg to move, in page 69, line 10, at the end, to insert:
Provided that where the average height of a room from floor to ceiling is less than eight feet the foregoing table shall have effect as if each of the floor areas specified in the first column thereof were increased to the nearest integer in

the same ratio as that of the average height of the room to eight feet."

Major MILNER: I beg to second the Amendment.

Question put, "That those words be there inserted in the Bill."

The House divided:Ayes,69; Noes, 229.

Division No. 227.]
AYES.
[7.10 p.m.


Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Dyke
Griffith, F. Kingsley (Middlesbro', W).
Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot


Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South)
Griffiths, George A. (Yorks,W.Riding)
Milner, Major James


Attlee, Clement Richard
Groves, Thomas E.
Owen, Major Goronwy


Banfield, John William
Grundy, Thomas W.
Parkinson, John Allen


Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)
Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Rea, Walter Russell


Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)
Harris, Sir Percy
Roberts, Aled (Wrexham)


Buchanan, George
Hicks, Ernest George
Rothschild, James A. de


Cape, Thomas
Holdsworth, Herbert
Salter, Dr. Alfred


Cleary, J. J.
Janner, Barnett
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)


Cocks, Frederick Seymour
Jenkins, Sir William
Smith, Tom (Normanton)


Cove, William G.
Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shields)
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)


Daggar, George
Jones, J. J. (West Ham, Silvertown)
Thorne, William James


Davies, David L. (Pontypridd)
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Tinker, John Joseph


Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)
Kirkwood, David
West, F. R.


Davies, Stephen Owen
Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
White, Henry Graham


Dobbie, William
Lawson, John James
Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)


Edwards, Charles
Leonard, William
Williams, Or. John H. (Lianelly)


Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univ.)
Liewellyn-Jones, Frederick
Williams, Thomas (York. Don Valley)


Evans, R. T. (Carmarthen)
Logan, David Gilbert
Wilmot, John


Foot, Dingle (Dundee)
Lunn, William
Wood, Sir Murdoch McKenzie (Banff)


Gardner, Benjamin Walter
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
Young, Ernest J. (Middlesbrough, E.)


Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
McEntee, Valentine L.



Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur
Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan)
Mainwaring, William Henry
Mr. John and Mr. Paling.


NOES.


Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G.
Campbell-Johnston, Malcoim
Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey


Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'k'nh'd)
Caporn, Arthur Cecil
Elliston, Captain George Sampson


Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent)
Carver, Major William H.
Entwistle, Cyril Fullard


Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir William (Armagh)
Cautley, Sir Henry S.
Erskine-Boist, Capt. C. C. (Blackpool)


Bailey, Eric Alfred George
Cayzer, Sir Charles (Chester, City)
Essenhigh, Reginald Clare


Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M.
Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)
Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst


Balfour, Capt. Harold (I. of Thanet)
Cazalet, Capt. V. A. (Chippenham)
Fleming, Edward Lascelles


Barrie, Sir Charles Coupar
Chapman, Col. R.(Houghton-le-Spring)
Fremantle, Sir Francis


Barton, Capt. Basil Kelsey
Chapman, Sir Samuel (Edinburgh, S.)
Ganzoni, Sir John


Beaumont, Hon. R.E.B. (Portsm'th, C.)
Clarry, Reginald George
Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton


Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel
Cobb, Sir Cyril
Gibson, Charles Granville


Bernays, Robert
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D,
Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John


Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman
Colfox, Major William Philip
Glossop, C. W. H.


Bottom, A. C.
Colville, Lieut.-Colonel J.
Gluckstein, Louis Halle


Boulton, W. W.
Cook, Thomas A.
Gower, Sir Robert


Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W.
Cranborne, Viscount
Grattan-Doyle, Sir Nicholas


Braithwaite, J. G. (Hillsborough)
Crooke, J. Smedley
Grenfell, E. C. (City of London)


Brass, Captain Sir William
Crookshank, Col. C. de Windt (Bootle)
Gritten, W. G. Howard


Briscoe, Capt. Richard George
Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard
Guinness, Thomas L. E. B.


Broadbent, Colonel John
Culverwell, Cyril Tom
Gunston, Captain D. W.


Brocklebank, C. E. R.
Davies, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil)
Guy, J. C. Morrison


Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'ld., Hexham)
Davison, Sir William Henry
Hacking, Rt. Hon. Douglas H.


Brown, Ernest (Leith)
Denman, Hon. R, D.
Hales, Harold K.


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H.C.(Berks., Newb'y)
Dickie, John P.
Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)


Browns, Captain A. C.
Doran, Edward
Hanbury, Cecil


Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.
Drewe, Cedric
Harbord, Arthur


Burgin, Dr. Edward Leslie
Duckworth, George A. V.
Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes)


Burnett, John George
Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.)
Haslam, Henry (Korncastle)


Burton, Colonel Henry Walter
Dunglass, Lord
Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M.


Cadogan, Hon. Edward
Eady, George H.
Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.


Heneaga, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P.
Mander, Geoffrey le M.
Salley, Harry R.


Herbert. Capt. S. (Abbey Division)
Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M.
Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.


Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.
Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar)


Hope, Capt. Hon. A. O. J. (Alton)
Martin, Thomas B.
Shepperson, Sir Ernest W.


Hore-Belisha, Leslie
Mason, Col. Glyn K. (Croydon, N.)
Sinclair, Col. T.(Queen's Unv., Belfast)


Hornby, Frank
Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John
Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Welter D.


Howard, Tom Forrest
Mellor, Sir J. S. P.
Somervell, Sir Donald


Hudson, Capt. A. u. M. (Hackney, N.)
Mills, Sir Frederick (Leyton, E.)
Somerville, D. G. (Willesden, East)


Hume. Sir George Hopwood
Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)
Soper, Richard


Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries)
Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)
Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L.


Hunter, Capt. M. J. (Brigs)
Moreing, Adrian C.
Spencer, Captain Richard A.


Inakip, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas W. H.
Morgan, Robert H.
Spender-Clay, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.


Jackson, sir Henry (Wandsworth, C.)
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)
Spent, William Patrick


Jennings, Roland
Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univer'ties)
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)


Jesson, Major Thomas E.
Moss, Captain H. J.
Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)


Joel, Dudley J. Barnato
Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H.
Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)


Johnston, J. W. (Clackmannan)
Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth)
Stones, James


Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)
O'Connor, Terence James
Storey, Samuel


Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose)
Ormiston, Thomas
Stourton, Hon. John J.


Kerr, Hamilton W.
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William G.A.
Strauss, Edward A.


Kimball, Lawrence
Pearson, William G.
Strickland, Captain W. F


Knox, Sir Alfred
Peat, Charles U.
Stuart, Lord C. Crichton-


Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton
Penny, Sir George
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir Murray F.


Lambert, Rt. Hon. George
Perkins, Walter R. D.
Tate, Mavis Constance


Law, Sir Alfred
Petherick, M.
Thomas. James P. L. (Hereford)


Lockie, J. A.
Peto, Geoffrey K.(W'verh'pt'n, Bilst'n)
Thompson. Sir Luke


Leech, Dr. J. W.
Pike, Cacil F.
Thomson, Sir James D. W.


Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.
Titchfield, Major the Marquess of


Levy, Thomas
Procter, Major Henry Adam
Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement


Lewis, Oswald
Ramsay. T. B. W. (Western Isles)
Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.


Liddall, Walter S.
Ramsbotham, Harwald
Wallace, Sir John (Dunfermline)


Lindsay, Kenneth (Kilmarnock)
Ramsden, Sir Eugene
Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)


Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest
Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)
Ward, Sarah Adelaide (Cannock)


Llewellin, Major John J.
Reid, David D. (County Down)
Warrender, Sir Victor A. G.


Lloyd, Geoffrey
Reid, William Allan (Derby)
Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour


Locker-Lampson, Com. O.(H'ndswth)
Rickards, George William
Wells, Sydney Richard


Luftus, Pierce C.
Robinson, John Roland
Weymouth, Viscount


Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander
Rosbotham, Sir Thomas
Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)


Macdonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness)
Ross Ronald D.
Wills Wilfrid D.


Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)
Rosa Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)
Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl


McKeag William
Runge, Norah Cecil
Wise, Alfred R.


McKie, John Hamilton
Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy)
Worthington. Dr. John V.


Maclay Hob Joseph Paton
Russell, R. J. (Eddlsbury)
Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'V'oaks)


McLean Major Sir Alan
Rutherford, John (Edmonton)



McLean,' Dr. W. H. (Tradeston)
Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Macmillan, Maurice Harold
Salmon, Sir Isidore
Mr. Blindell and Commander


Mugnay, Thomas
Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)
Southby.


Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest
Savery, Servington



Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — SECOND SCHEDULE.—(Provisions as to the compulsory purchase of land in, connection, with re-development in accordance with a re-development plan.)

Amendments made: In page 69, line 21, at the end, insert:
(i) the compensation shall be assessed in accordance with such of the provisions of section seventeen of this Act relating to the assessment of compensation in respect of land purchased compulsorily as are applicable to the particular case.

In page 70, line 33, after "any," insert "land comprising or consisting of a."—[Mr. Shakespeare.]

Orders of the Day — FOURTH SCHEDULE.—(Part III: local authorities' contributions.)

7.16 p.m.

Sir HENRY CAUTLEY: I beg to move, in page 77, line 9, at the end, to insert:
(b) where the area chargeable with the expenses of a scheme or schemes is or has been altered by reason of the coming into operation of the provisions of an order
made by the Minister under section forty-six of the Local Government Act, 1929, the Minister shall make such equitable adjustment by reduction of the amount ascertained in accordance with paragraph eight of Part II of this Schedule as is required by the circumstances in respect of each year subsequent to the date of alteration.
This Bill contains provision for the consolidation of housing accounts. The Fourth Schedule deals particularly with the method of calculating or consolidating the amounts that have to be paid by a housing authority in respect of housing schemes that were started and carried out under Section 7 of the Housing Act, 1919.The House will remember that as an inducement to get local authorities to build houses under that Act, the Government stated that under the Act they were partners with the local authorities, and that the authorities need have no hesitation in building, because their liability was limited to a penny rate and the Government would help with the rest. As time is limited, it will be shorter if I
explain a concrete case which occurred just outside my division in Sussex and which represents, in my view, a grave hardship; in fact, I go further and say a grave injustice. This has been brought about by the operation, no doubt unforeseen by anybody, of the review of county districts and the alteration by the county council of Sussex of the local authorities in that county. The Rural District Council of Eastbourne, shortly after the 1919Housing Act came into operation, built 68 houses for their district. A penny rate meant, roughly, £200. These houses have all been occupied since, and the contribution to the Treasury has met the whole loss on them over and above the£200 per annum.
Under the Local Government Act, 1929, Section 46, the Sussex County Council reviewed the county districts and reduced its local authorities very considerably. By an order which came into operation on 1st April, 1934, it abolished the Eastbourne Rural District Council altogether and changed the neighbouring Hailsham Rural District very considerably, adding to it the whole of the area of the Eastbourne Rural District Council and a portion, which came from my division, of the Uckfield District Council. The county council trebled the area and the population, and more than trebled the amount of a penny rate that had been produced by Eastbourne. The question then arose as to the payment of the contribution by the Treasury that had gone on for so many years in respect of the houses that were built by the Eastbourne Rural District Council under the Act of Parliament which said that they were to be paid for by a rate on the area that was then chargeable. To the consternation of the new inhabitants of the Hailsham district, where the penny rate produced £700,the Minister decided that in his view the £200 liability of the Eastbourne Rural District in respect of these 64 houses was to become £700.
When I say that this additional charge of £500 a year on this new area, spread over the whole period for which the existing loan for the housing scheme has to run, means a sum of£20,000, I think that the House will agree that my words are not too strong when I say that it is really a grave injustice to the new population of the Hailsham district. That district is a very large area. The Hailsham Dis-
trict Council itself had under the 1919 Act and under subsequent Acts entered into housing schemes and were already paying more than a penny rate for them. Owing to the amalgamation, it is faced with this enormous additional expenditure. I am certain that everybody in the House will agree that it was never contemplated when the expenditure was incurred that such would be the effect of the amalgamation. It never occurred to anybody, and I have some doubts whether the Minister is legally right in giving this construction to it. We assume, how ever, that he is right, and we take it that he is right, and my Amendment provides that he shall have power to deal equitably with cases, so that the Treasury and the ratepayers shall not stiffer, according to the circumstances of the cases as they arise.
I was not on the Committee that cansidered this Bill, and I could not there fore argue this point when it was before the Committee, but I notice that the Minister stated he had not had any similar case. I accept that statement, but I am certain that other cases will arise, and must arise, if any other county takes the drastic steps that were taken by the Sussex County Council in reducing its 11 rural districts to five or six. I move this Amendment on behalf of the Hailsham District Council, but it is a matter of general public importance, and may affect every other local authority of the country some time or other.

Mr. LEVY: I beg to second the Amendment.

7.25 p.m.

Sir H. YOUNG: My hon. And learned Friend made his case so very clear to the House that the House will perceive that the Amendment he proposes is really an Amendment to adapt the provisions of the Act of 1919 to the circumstances which cover the review under the Act of 1925. It is, therefore, a little remote to the general purposes of the present Bill. I do not complain of that in the least; I only admire the ingenuity and promptitude with which my hon. and learned Friend has seized the opportunity of raising a most interesting case and one that deserves consideration. He has illustrated his argument by the case of the Hailsham Council, but indeed his argument is the case of that council, because it is the only case of this sort
which has occurred. Now that the county reviews are approaching their conclusion, I think we may expect that it will be the only case that will occur. That, how ever, does not relieve me of the necessity of considering the case and the strong representations which my hon. and learned Friend has based upon it.
It is not, of course, the case that the manner in which the arrangement has been made in this particular instance depends on the exercise of any discretion on my part. It simply depends on my fulfilment of the duties imposed upon me by Parliament as they are interpreted by me and by my legal advisers. I recognise the prima facie case which is made by my hon. and learned Friend. If it were of frequent occurrence 'and led to in equities, it would deserve to be met, but, as a matter of fact, when we consider only the single case we are bound to look at the conditions of that particular case. In looking at the conditions, my hon. and learned Friend knows that there is the strongest reason to think that there has been no inequity in this particular case, because we have not only to consider the effect of the 1919 Act, but also the effect of the other housing Acts. It is a case of what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. The 1919houses 'are not the only houses whose finances are affected by the county review. There are houses under later Acts, and the point I want particularly to emphasise is that the ratepayers of the old Hailsham rural district, instead of bearing the whole loss of houses erected in that district under later Acts, will share the loss with the ratepayers of the other areas which are added to their own in the new district. In this case, if you setoff the advantages in one respect against the disadvantages in another, the result to the ratepayers of the old Hailsham rural district would be that they neither gain nor lose on balance.

Sir H. CAUTLEY: Part of the added area is nothing to do with Hailsham.

Sir H. YOUNG: The hon. and learned Member is slightly shifting his ground, because his grievance is based on the case of the old Hailsham district. If I am not dealing with that, I fail to under stand from his argument with what I
am dealing. Up to the amalgamation the cost to Hailsham of its housing scheme under the Act of 1919 was a rate of 2½d.; now, when the cost of the schemes will be spread over the enlarged district, it will require a rate of only lid. One must look to the total result in order to see whether justice is being done and not pick out one instance. The Exchequer stands to lose just as much—

Sir H. CA UTL EY: To gain, surely? The Exchequer gets £500 a year more.

Sir H. YOUNG: The hon. and learned Gentleman did not let me finish my sentence. The Exchequer stands to lose just as much where a district is reduced as it stands to gain where a district is increased. The scales are weighted exactly evenly between the two. In this instance there is no injustice in practical experience, because the account for the ratepayers works out, as a result of the extension, exactly to what it was before, and we say that there is no case for a special Amendment of this character.

Mr. SPEAKER: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman wish to press his Amendment?

Sir H. CAUTLEY: I do not think it is any good pressing it, although the Minister has not convinced me that the ratepayers of Hailsham are not suffering a great injustice; but I leave the position as it is.

Mr. SPEAKER: Then I will put the Amendment to the House.

Amendment negatived.

Orders of the Day — SIXTH SCHEDULE.—(Consequential, Drafting and Minor Amendments.)

Amendment made: In page 82, line 41, at the end, insert:

"The Act of 1930
In section twenty-one, in subsection (2),the words "the terms of" shall be omitted."

[Mr. Shakespeare.]

Orders of the Day — SEVENTH SCHEDULE.—(Part I: Enactments repealed as from the commencement of this Act.)

Amendment made: In page 88, line 33, column 3, at the end, insert:
In section twenty-one, in sub-section (2), the words the terms of."—[Mr. Shakespeare.]

7.35 p.m.

Sir H. YOUNG: I beg to move,
That the Bill be re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House in respect of the Amendment in Clause 61, page 50, line 38,standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Sir Hilton Young.
I understand that, according to our Standing Orders, it is proper for me to make an explanation, a brief explanation, of the Clause which is to be amended. Recommittal of a Bill is necessary where it is contemplated, in the course of the Report stage, to make any changes of a certain character, and among them is a change which would impose a charge upon the rates. In the course of the Report stage the question arose of the compensation payable to an owner-occupier in connection with a slum clearance scheme. I undertook to reconsider the amount of compensation to be awarded, and as a result of that reconsideration an Amendment has been put down. In order that that Amendment may be discussed it is necessary for the House to go into Committee, and in order to get the House into Committee, it is necessary to move this Motion for recommittal at the present stage.

Bill accordingly considered in Committee.

Orders of the Day — CLAUSE 61.—(Payments in respect of well maintained houses.)

7.36 p.m.

Sir H. YOUNG: I beg to move, in page 50, line 38, after "times," to insert:
(or, if the house is occupied by an owner thereof and has been owned and occupied by him or by a member of his family continuously during the three years immediately before the date on which the order is confirmed, three times).
This Amendment has been put down in order to fulfil the undertaking which I gave to the House on the Report stage to reconsider the question of compensation which can be paid to an owner-occupier when his house is marked for clearance under the provisions of the Slum Clearance Act, 1930. A very strong opinion was expressed from many quarters of the House, if not from all, that special consideration should be given to the case of the owner-occupier. If I can accurately summarise a long and interesting Debate, the basis of the opinion was that the owner-occupier
deserves particular consideration in comparison with other owners, in the first place because his interests are so vitally affected; but I think what was more particularly in the minds of hon. Members was the circumstance that when an owner-occupier is living in a house which is unfit for habitation if there is any injury it is an injury which he himself suffers. He is imposing no injury upon any other person, he is not making a profit by an unsocial act towards tenants who obtain their accommodation from him.
On that occasion I had to deal with two Amendments, one proposed by the hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman) and the other by the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), and in undertaking to give consideration to the arguments pressed upon me I pointed out that in meeting the case for providing moreadequate—more generous, if you like—compensation for the owner-occupier I must adhere to the principle ca relating the compensation to the actual value of the property which was being taken, and to no other value at, all. On that basis I come to the conclusion that we come nearest to our common intentions in an Amendment which is practically the same as that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Leeds, which extends the compensation to three times the conventional sum which can be claimed by the owner-occupier under paragraph (b) of The Clause to which we refer. The House will see that we confine this to a house which has been owned and occupied "by him or by a member of his family." That is to deal with the possibility ofsuccession through the death of the owner-occupier during the period, a period which is limited to three years. The purpose of limiting the period is to rule out the possibility of this provision being abused by fictitious transfers to tenants in order to put them in the fictitious position of owner-occupier when that is not the true position. I feel the 'Committee will consider that this Amendment fully meets the desire of the House on the occasion I have referred to, and I hope they will add it to the Bill.

7.40 p.m.

Mr. G. R. STRAUSS: I should just like to say that in the opinion of myself and of my friends, far too heavy burdens
have been already put on the ratepayers in respect of compensation to owners of slum property. I do not want to discuss the justice of this extra compensation. If there is a case for better compensation it is the case of the owner-occupier, but I say that the Government have put an immense burden on the ratepayers, the effect of which will be to slow up the work of rehousing people living in slums and to make it very much more expensive. I think it is thoroughly undesirable to impose this further burden of compensation to which the Government have been induced to agree at the last moment. This additional burden should not be placed on the ratepayers but on the tax payers, and should come out of the Exchequer, as, in fact, should all the additional compensation which the Government are giving in this Measure to slum landlords of various classes.

7.42 p.m.

Mr. D ENMAN: I regret that there should be any discordant note in the reception of this Amendment, especially from the bench behind the Opposition Front Bench. I admit that I had expected discord from the Opposition Front Bench Members, because they did their very best when this matter originally came up to prevent the owner-occupier having the benefit of this very modest little measure of compensation. They not only desired to prevent him from getting it, but did all they could to pre vent the subject even from being discussed. They tried to surround it with all manner of political prejudice, and they succeeded in deceiving the "Daily Herald." The "Daily Herald," as we all know, is strict in its presentation of facts. The Opposition Front Bench led them so much astray as to make them completely misrepresent the facts of the Debate and to mis-state the issue. I must quote the result of the Opposition Front Bench attacks, because they tended to create political prejudice which ought not to have been introduced into this matter. The back bench Members of the Labour party were perfectly right in their attitude. They understand perfectly well, as the right hon. Gentleman who leads the Opposition would understand, the fundamental difference between owning property for use and owning it for profit. Our Amendment dealt solely with those who were owning it for personal use, and
the Members on the Labour back benches were entirely justified in giving it the support they did.
But let me return to the "Daily Herald." Their report of that Debate was given under a large headline, occupying half a page, saying "Minister gives in to slum owners." To designate these owner-occupiers as slum owners is to create an impression which, to say the least, is misleading. Then they went on to state, in large print, that the Minister had "acceded to Tory demands for an increase in the compensation to landlords under the Housing Bill." There, again, the owner-occupier is not a person whom one would ordinarily describe as a land lord if one wished to present a picture that would be understood. Then they descended from large to ordinary print to say:
A group of Tories demanding high compensation for landlords, led by Lord Eustace Percy and Lord Winterton, added to the Government's discomfiture by demanding more for slum landlords.
I have not the least doubt that to-morrow when the facts are pointed out the "Daily Herald" will make amends for these misstatements. It is merely the result of the series of speeches issued from the Front Opposition Bench on which all those statements were based. Just to make the position perfectly clear, and as the right hon. Member for Wake field (Mr. Greenwood) is present, I will quote his own words. He began with these words:
We have opened the door in one Amendment"—
mine is here referred to—
to a rediscussion of compensation for slum landlords; we are to open it again in this new Amendment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th May,1935; col. 1919; Vol. 301.]
the Noble Lord's. As he led the "Daily Herald" astray, I hope he will do his best now to make the truth plain. The truth was perfectly plain at the time. The Noble Lord's Amendment and his own express language clearly con fined the case to the occupier owner. The House came to the conclusion that the occupier owners deserved better treatment. My right hon. Friend has taken the Amendment proposed by my Leeds colleagues and myself, and, as we should expect from my right hon. Friend, he has adorned and improved it. He has added buttons to it that make it in many ways more presentable and more accept-
able to the occupier owner, and I thank him very sincerely on behalf of myself and my friends for the acceptance of the Amendment and for his conduct on that occasion, which though it occasioned some criticism has justified itself in the result.
I ought to close with one word of apology to the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) and his colleagues whose Amendment went so much further than mine. I feel guilty rather of the crime of blacklegging, of accepting something that is inferior to trade union conditions, in accepting an Amendment which does not go so far as the Amendment of the Noble Lord. My only excuse is that I have long learnt in this House that one gains more of one's objectives if one advocates some thing that a Minister may reasonably accept rather than something one would like to get.

7.48 p.m.

Mr. GREENWOOD: We came to an honourable understanding some time ago with regard to the completion of the Report stage of this Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Oh, yes. The hon. Member has thought fit to raise what he might have said in three words—his words of thanks to The Minister for accepting this Amendment—but he has gone out of his way to attack me for something for which I have no responsibility, the control of the "Daily Herald." I am bound to enter my emphatic protest against this deliberate violation of an honourable understanding reached in this House a fortnight ago. The hon. Member has had an Amendment accepted. He should have been satisfied. If he lets loose a large volume of criticism no doubt the Noble Lord will want to say some thing. That being so, agreements of this kind come to nothing. The speech which I made on this particular issue was not a speech either against the slum land lords or against the owner-occupiers. My first protest in this House was made because the hon. Member moved an Amendment to a recommittal Motion which no Minister ever in the history of this House has accepted. The Minister quite rightly and properly spurned the idea of accepting the hon. Member's Amendment to are committal Motion. But the large looming figure of the Noble Lord arose in the House and spread his long arms over the right hon. Gentleman
on the Front Bench and cast a spell over him, and the Minister then accepted the recommittal. That was our first protest and a perfectly proper protest. Our second protest was that in this next stage of the Bill through a pure accident of machinery the House of Commons was used to open financial questions which normally every Member of the House thought would have been closed at the end of the Committee stage. We were entitled to make that protest. We were entitled also to make the protest that the right hon. Gentleman not only accepted the recommittal Motion but gave a little more money even to owner-occupiers in slums who there by are slum landlords.

Sir FRANCIS FREMANTLE: It is not confined to owner-occupiers in slums. What is the point of putting in the word "slums"

Mr. GREENWOOD: The hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman) based his case on the owner-occupier. The Minister of Health made a concession greater than that asked for my the hon. Member for Central Leeds. It is a concession which goes far beyond, as I under stand it, what was asked for by the hon. Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle).I am bound to protest against this suggestion that I or anybody else should go out of his way to try to influence newspapers. We are not as successful at it as the Postmaster-General. He is conducting a campaign on this question with the backing of hon. Members on the other side of the House. Here is a suggestion made for some reason or another by the hon. Member for Central Leeds, magnifying his own importance in this question, that we go out of our way to misrepresent what he and the Minister says. I am bound to say that it is a little unfair at this hour of the evening, one and a half hours after our understanding about the completion of the Report stage, that the hon. Member for Central Leeds should have thrown this problem into this maelstrom of political discussion. If hon. Members wanted it so much, they should have had it earlier. I have tried to be very reason able in conducting all the negotiations and discussions on this Bill. Nobody can say that either on the Floor of the House or in Committee have I followed obstructionist tactics. The House ought to know that my right hon. and hon. Friends on this side of the House resent
very much the intervention of a speech which makes so unnecessary and wanton an attack on people on this side of the House, and which makes an attack on a newspaper for something which has nothing whatever to do with the Amendment, thus impeding the House and undermining the confidence of Members in a gentleman's agreement.

7.55 p.m.

Earl WINTERTON: In the whole of my experience I have never heard a more unjustifiable speech than that to which we have just listened. During a period which, by arrangement through the usual channel, was devoted to the Report stage, it is true to say that something like 80 percent. of the time has been taken up by Members opposite. Not content with that, they interrupt each other, and, if there has been any waste of time, it is solely due to them. As regards the immediate question at issue, the right hon. Gentleman, while ready enough to attack other Members and to impute the most mean motives to them, is furious with other people for attacking him. He thinks his position is so good in this House that nobody can dare to attack him. He con ducted a most ferocious attack on the hon. Member below the Gangway who merely pointed out the facts of the situation. The facts are that in the "Daily Herald" the day after the Debate there was a most disgraceful misrepresentation.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Captain Bourne): I do not think we can discuss what the daily newspapers say.

Earl WINTERTON: I will, of course, bow to your Ruling, but you permitted the hon. Member to quote the newspaper in question.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: We cannot have a debate on what newspapers may or may not choose to publish.

Earl WINTERTON: This places me in a very difficult position. The hon. Member below the Gangway raised the question of the action of this newspaper which made a direct reference to me. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, it said so in the paper. I do not wish to contravene your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Chairman, but I took so serious a view of the matter that I intended to raise it as a question of Privilege.

Mr. GREENWOOD: You should have done so.

Earl WINTERTON: I did not do so, because this particular newspaper owes its huge circulation in this country to one thing and one thing only, and that is the accuracy of its betting news. I will not say any more about it.

Mr. GREENWOOD: On a point of Order. The Noble Lord is now again making charges. I do submit it is absolutely out of order on the Motion.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: We had better not discuss what may or may not have appeared in a newspaper. I do not think that a charge of a newspaper having accurate betting news may be regarded as discreditable.

Earl WINTERTON: I will, of course, comply with your Ruling. In so far as any persons or institutions outside this House were led into a misinterpretation of the situation, it was largely due to the right hon. Member for Swindon (Dr. Addison) who on a previous occasion used very much the same language in the House as has been used outside. When my hon. Friend below the Gangway is attacked the right hon. Gentleman can rest assured that others who belong to the party of my hon. Friend will always come to his aid. We know the motives for the treatment to which he has been subjected. We know how very wounding it is to Members opposite that they took the honest and courageous action they did in the past. I would like to say to the right hon. Gentleman and the Parliamentary Secretary that we on this side of the House are very much obliged to them for the action they have taken in this matter. They had a difficult situation with which to deal. They have, quite rightly, adhered to what was clearly the opinion of the majority of their own supporters in the matter. They have been greatly attacked and abused for so doing, and here again they are attacked in this Amendment for what is doing no more than plain justice to a body of people in the country whom those of us who sit on this side of the House are anxious always to assist—that is, the small owners of property. We quite understand that the Opposition do not want to assist them. If the Opposition were consistent, which they never are, they would go into the Lobby to vote
against this Amendment. I do not think that they will, and they are wise. They know perfectly well that if they vote in favour of this Amendment they would be voting in favour of justice.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill reported; as amended on recommittal, considered.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. SHAKESPEARE: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
In moving the Third Reading of this Bill, perhaps the House will allow me to express my personal pride to-day at being associated with a Bill of this magnitude, and one which, I believe, is fraught with precious consequences to the social well-being of our people. During the long Committee and Report stages we have been very near the picture we have painted—so near that we have missed its real significance. We have been heightening this tone or softening that, but now on the Third Reading Debate I think it right that we should all stand well back from the picture so that we can see the real meaning of this academy piece. The Bill represents the last stage of the Government's housing policy which has been continuously, and I hope courageously, pursued. The successive stages I need only mention in passing—thewithdrawal of the general subsidy, the liberation of private enterprise, the concentration of subsidy where it was needed, the launching of the great slum crusade, and, finally, this methodical, direct and scientific attack on overcrowding.
The cumulative effect of all these stages has led to results beyond expectation. The liberation of private enterprise has resulted in an output of houses last year by private enterprise without subsidy amounting to the astonishing total of 286,000, a greater total than has ever been achieved in any post-War year, even taking the total built by private enterprise and by local authorities. The number built by private enterprise has exceeded both. If we take our slum crusade, we have already rehoused under the 1930 Act some 200,000 persons, a total greater than the number rehoused in the previous 60 years. At the present moment we are rehousing at the rate of 150,000 slum tenants a year, and the rate is
accelerating all the time. One can confidently predict that at the end of the year, or at the beginning of next year, we shall be rehousing at an annual rate of 250,000. The rehousing approvals we have given in the last four months mean that we are working at an annual rate of approval for rehousing—that is the last stage in slum clearance—of 66,000 houses a year. I give these facts, because it is just as well sometimes in these days of dictatorships to have some figures to show that a democratic country can dare, can conceive and achieve tasks like these.
In this Bill we are putting the corner stone to our policy of a nation-wide attack on overcrowding. Perhaps' I may recall that a very interesting little Act was passed in the reign of Elizabeth to deal with the same problem. One Clause ran as follows:
Great mischiefs and inconveniences daily grow and increase by reason of the pestering of houses with divers families, harbouring of inmates and converting of great houses into several tenements or dwellings, and many idle vagrant and wicked persons have harboured there.
The problem then was the problem that faces us now, and, though Act after Act has followed down the centuries, it is left to us, fortified by an awakened public opinion, to complete the task. In this Bill we demand, and I know we shall receive, the co-operation of all parties—local authorities, housing associations, landlords, owners and occupiers—in remedying an evil which we have all tolerated too long. Will the House allow me to summarise the method of our direct attack? I summarise it like this: we aim at providing on the right scale the right accommodation in the right places at the right rent and for the right people. Let me very briefly touch on each of these subheads. I shall have to traverse familiar ground, ground which is torn with many a shell hole, but I will be as brief as possible.
First, the provision of accommodation on the right scale. This will involve, of course, an estimate of the measure of overcrowding, a survey by local authorities, and the laying down of a national standard. We have chosen a minimum standard which should be tolerated at the present stage of our housing history. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, it is an adequate standard, a standard which we can enforce, a standard the in fringement of which constitutes an
offence. Although we ask owners and occupiers for a curtailment of the liberty they have hitherto enjoyed to overcrowd their houses as they like, we have not met with any real opposition in the discussion on the Committee stages. It has been said outside this House that to impose a standard is to interfere with the liberty of the subject to do what he likes with his own house. This is un questionably an interference and it is said that an Englishman's home is his castle, but when as very often happens it is a dungeon—there are tens of thousands of basement dwellings in London alone—euphemistic proverbs like that cease to have any meaning at all. I remark, in passing, that we have met with no hostility from any section of the House to the principle of laying down a standard. I think I have detected in some of the speeches of the noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) a doubt as to whether it is necessary. All these Housing Acts and Rent Restrictions Acts are necessitated by the fact that not all landlords have the same sense of responsibility as regards their tenants. f have some reason for saying, because I have had an opportunity of inspecting the houses owned or managed by himself under trust associations, that if all landlords had the same regard for working-class tenants as he has most of our restrictions would be unnecessary. But it is not so and, there fore, we are proceeding with this Bill.
I ask the House to remember that this is a novel principle and an experiment, and that it is vital to choose a standard which rests upon the approval of those who have to administer it. If you attempt anything less you fail. We have secured the general approval of the local authorities and medical officers of health to draw up this standard and they have to administer it. As my right hon. Friend says, we have chosen it, and we mean to enforce it. It can be enforced. If we chose a higher standard, I am afraid the whole attack might fail. When we have gained experience of this method we shall improve on it. But anyone who knows anything about the provision of a standard at the present time will agree that local authorities for the next five or 10years in our big industrial areas will have their hands filled with the over crowding problem.
The next point was the provision of the right accommodation. Experience has shown that the mere building of accommodation is not enough. It must be the right accommodation and must be in The right place. As regards right accommodation, we have no preference for flats. All we say is that on expensive sites flats are inevitable. In the provinces it is different. Workers can be re-housed within two or three miles of the town. We believe that the improved technique in flat construction and the opportunities long enjoyed by the middle-classes to have labour-saving devices in modern flats will make the provision of flats accept able to the working classes. My experience is that where working classes have been put into flats they have welcomed the opportunity and all their prejudices have disappeared.
The right accommodation must be pro vided in the right place. There has been a long discussion as to whether you should re-house people near their work or take them out to the garden cities. There is nothing inconsistent between these two policies. I think the hon. Baronet has traversed this ground before. If you are dealing with any congested area in London and you are re-housing on the site in a normal case, you may not be able to get back on the site more than 70 per cent. of the population. There fore, you have to re-house the 30 per cent. somewhere else, perhaps in cottage estates. There is nothing inconsistent in these two policies, but we do say that in so far as it is possible it is essential for people to live near their work and for accommodation to be so provided. The argument that you must house the workers a day's march away, so to speak, is usually advanced by gentlemen of leisure who need not get to their work until 11 o'clock any morning of the week and need not turn up every day.
In connection with the provision of accommodation near work, one must mention, of course, the powers of re-development, which are, indeed, the kernel of the Bill as regards London 'and the big industrial areas. We believe that these powers will enable decisive inroads to be made in the central areas of congestion, and we have accepted several Amendments to make clear our purpose. We have given power to any urban authority to develop or re-develop in respect of
areas containing 50 working-class houses, one-third of which are insanitary, over crowded or congested. We have given the widest possible definition. Experience of Kings way shows that over a long course of time re-development need not be a loss. Indeed, with the subsidy given by the Bill, it may result in a profit. I anticipate that housing authorities will choose large areas coming within the definition, will clear those areas at market value and then will plan and build, allocating space for business premises, shops, houses 'and recreational facilities. I hope they will build according to some of the most enlightened town-planning principles. We have enabled the owners to co-operate in these projects, and we have provided machinery by which that co-operation may be speeded up.
So much for the right accommodation and the right place. Now about the right rent. It is no good providing accommodation for the workers unless it be within their means. We are giving an automatic subsidy in regard to flats, and it will enable a three-room flat to be pro vided in the provinces at an inclusiverent—inclusive of rates—of from 9s. to 10s. per week. In London it will be slightly higher, from 11s. to 12s. a week. Those who know anything about housing conditions will welcome the generous subsidy provision in the Bill. The House will remember that the consolidation of subsidy, and the continuance of the slum clearance subsidy for five years will mean that money can be used from the subsidy pool to reduce rents below the average for needy cases. As regards the cottage subsidy, it is discretionary. Last week I was opening a very nice housing estate at Dunstable where, without subsidy, the local authority have provided cottages, that is, ordinary working-class houses, at an inclusive rent of 10s.ld. It is, there fore, clear that that subsidy must be discretionary. If rehousing involves a burden in relation to the past expenditure or future activity of the housing authority, by virtue of the problem of de-crowding being a big one and the rent paying capacity of the tenants who are to be rehoused being low, the discretionary subsidy is available to enable the provision of cottages at an inclusive rent at from 8s. to 9s. a week. As regards rural areas, the subsidy is very substantial, and will enable cottages to be provided
for decrowded agricultural workers at from 3s. to 5s. For rehousing over crowded industrial workers in the rural areas, the discretionary subsidy under Clause 31 will be available, and will provide cottages at an inclusive rent of about 7s. We have provided the right accommodation and the right rent.
Now we get to the right people. In Clause 50 we give first preference in re housing, and in respect of the new houses that are to be provided by local authorities, to slum tenants, and to those in overcrowded or unsatisfactory houses. They have the first chance, as indeed they should. Hon. Members should notice that there is a duty on local authorities to provide accommodation for the needy tenant according to his need. Clause50 is so drafted as to secure by administration the subsidy for those who need it, but only as long as they need it, and provision is made for periodical surveys to see that that principle is being carried out. All of us who have had industrial experience know that frequent complaints are made by overcrowded persons who claim that, although lavish subsidies are being paid for the provision of houses, it is often the cream of the work ing class who have been rehoused. Let hon. Members note that Clause 50 puts a duty on the local authority to rehouse the needy and overcrowded worker, and to adjust the rent according to his need.
The provision of new accommodation will not always be necessary. We widen the powers for reconditioning, and we confer, for the first time, compulsory powers for the acquisition of suitable property at market values, subject to deduction for disrepair or overcrowding. In acquiring a cottage which is suitable for reconditioning a local authority is able, for the first time, to get a subsidy under the Act of 1926 which has hitherto only been available to the private owner. That means that if a rural authority possess a cottage suitable for reconditioning, one-third of the cost of reconditioning it will be paid by the Exchequer. We make a new experiment, and give an opportunity for a new experiment, in housing management. Housing management should be continuous, and we enable a local authority to submit a scheme to the Ministry for a housing management commission which will demand skilled application, of good business methods, and will take housing
away from the interest of political parties who interfere with what should be a business proposition. We hope that many local authorities will adopt this method, which should be of great benefit to many of their tenants.
Although most of the work will be done by the local authorities, we bring into line the voluntary housing associations and enable them to co-operate in slum clearance, decrowding, re developmentand reconditioning. Where the housing association do that work it can secure the same subsidy as the local authority. We ease the position of voluntary housing authorities financially by also enabling them to go direct to the Public Works Loans Board. Subject to guarantee from the local authority, they can go to the board and can obtain advances up to 90 per cent. of the value of new construction. No word of mine can sufficiently express our admiration for the men and women who, in voluntary housing work in London and else where, have given devoted service to improving the housing conditions of their areas. The Bill is a recognition of the work they have done, and it will pro vide them with further opportunities for such work. A private person who wishes to redevelop can also go to the Public Works Loans Board, and can obtain an advance of two-thirds of the cost without any guarantee to anybody. If he can put down collateral security, he can obtain an advance of 75 per cent. of the value of the new construction. We also take power to recognise any central housing association as a sort of clearing house or advisory body of voluntary effort, and, if such a central housing association is formed, we take power to make financial contributions towards its expenses for five years. In administering the Act, the Minister will set up a Central Housing Advisory Committee, which will advise him on certain specified items. My right hon. Friend has given an assurance that he means to make this committee work, to get the right people on it, and to utilise their experience.
I have dealt with the main purpose of the Bill. The other provisions concern machinery and the re-equipping of local authorities in many respects, so that they can deal adequately with every stage of housing activity. I need not trouble the House with details of these matters. Finally, we take steps in the Bill to
remedy several injustices that have occurred during the operation of the slum crusade. The first is the removal of the reduction factor, which arbitrarily imposed a fictitious value for land purchased for re-housing. As regards the good house which is a bad neighbour, we have removed that from the clearance area altogether. We have done by statute what we have been doing recently by administration. If such a house comes into a clearance order, it can only come in at market value.
Thirdly, we have distinguished between the two types of owner—the owner who makes exorbitant profits out of his house, and the owner who has kept his house in a reasonable state of repair; and we have given a measure of compensation to the latter. In this connection we have just accepted a further differentiation in favour of the owner-occupier, which will give special compensation to the owner-occupier of a house that has been well maintained. My view, after visiting industrial areas, and particularly areas where there is slum property, is that one of the primary causes of discontent is the exorbitant rent exacted for slum property by unscrupulous owners. Twice I have come across in my own constituency cases in which the rents have amounted to a 300 per cent. profit on the value of the house. The extraction of a profit of 100 per cent. is not abnormal. Therefore, I do not grudge a concession to an owner-occupier who does not look upon his house as an investment or as a means of extracting profit from it, but is pre pared to accept a lower standard for himself.
I should like to thank all those Members who served on the Committee, including the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood), the hon. Member for North Lambeth (Mr. G. R. Strauss) and the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. T. Smith), who on several occasions moved Amendments which were accepted by the Government. On no occasion was there any obstruction. I must also thank the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris), and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Corn wall (Sir F. Acland), who gave us the advantage of their experience on frequent occasions. In my view, people may be judged by their reaction to big events, and this Housing Bill is no exception to
that rule. I do not expect the Opposi tion to laud our efforts,but sometimes, during the Committee stage, if the ranks ofTuscany forbore to cheer, they appeared to me to be lapsing intosilent acquiescence.
The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the awkward squad—the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Thorpe), my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Sir R. Gower), and my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams). I want to take up the cudgels on their behalf. There were about 40 Amendments moved from that direction which were accepted, and in my view they substantially improved the structure of the Bill. Its foundations remain unimpaired; no Amendment was accepted that in any way altered the main principle of the Bill; but we accepted 40Amendments which materially improved it. To be quite frank, however, there was one occasion when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne, who was very successful in moving drafting Amendments, reminded me of a certain author who was writing his big work in collaboration with his wife. Naturally, he was so grateful that he dedicated his book to his wife, but in these terms:
To my wife, but for whose loving and constant care this book would have been finished six months earlier.
On one occasion I felt like that. Never the less, the response given by every section of the House to the Bill shows the new housing conscience in this country. Never once during the Committee stage was it suggested that the owner could do what he liked with his own property; and, although the Bill will involve us in a considerable annual cost, never once from any quarter of the Committee was the argument used that we could not afford it. Indeed, the general sentiment was that we could not afford not to afford it. As one who has always been interested in the housing problem, I should like to say how fortunate I count myself to be living in an age when a big step forward like this is possible. I re member as a boy reading an essay one sentence of which has always stuck in my mind. It was written by someone who was travelling to one of the big London termini, and, looking out of the
window, saw the dingy dwellings in which teeming London lived. Although I have not read it for about 20 years, that sentence remains in my mind. He wrote:
When I consider the frantic arithmetic of this unthinkable population, herded together in dingy dwellings, 1 console myself by the reflection that each clingy dwelling is for someone the heart of all things, and the end of travel.
We have in this last generation attempted to provide, and, indeed, have provided, a measure of security for the worker in sickness, in old age, and in unemployment. In this Bill we are bent on providing for the worker that shelter within which conditions of health, amenity, privacy and independence can besecured—we are extending this security to a man's home, which is the centre of his social life and well-being.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. GREENWOOD: It would indeed be very ungracious of me, having regard to the kind words of the Parliamentary Secretary, if I did not say that we thank him very much. It is so infrequently that we have any tribute paid to our contributions in debate that this will stand out as a red-letter day in the history of the Government that a Member of the Government should have thanked my colleagues and me for the work that we did on the Standing Committee. But, having said that, we begin to part company. Often enough we have heard in this House the most extravagant claims made for Bills. The Parliamentary Secretary has used such extravagant phrases to-night. He calls this Bill—and I am not so sure that the artistically-minded people will think that it is really a compliment to the Bill—an academy piece. I understood that they are rather outworn and a little old-fashioned, and out-of-date and not responsive to modern needs. It may be that in his enthusiasm for housing, the Parliamentary Secretary has not been following the movements in the artistic circles in London, but I hope that he will withdraw this term, and not persist in calling this Bill an academy piece, because, although I do not think of it very highly, I should be very doubtful about casting such an insult upon it as to call it an academy piece.
As to the Bill itself. We have had 'to-day a White Paper dealing with
Housing—House Production, Slum Clearance, etc., England and Wales.
It is very interesting, so far as I can find from having glanced through it two or three times rather rapidly, that the great contribution of this Government to the solution of the housing problem—the Act of 1933—is not mentioned. Mention is made of thousands and indeed millions of houses, but there is no reference to the great contribution of this Government to this question. I refer to this because it is very important, now that this Bill is passing from us to go to another place, that we should put this piece of legislation in its proper setting. I think that I am right in saying that the direct result of the operation of the Act of 1933, which was to liberate the resources of building societies and guarantees behind local authorities, up to the end of last year, in England and Wales was that local authorities were 3,513 houses better off than they were. But, of course, that is not the real effect. The real effect is the Act of 1933, the purpose of which was to hamstring local authorities and to liberate all the forces of private enterprise, the outcome being the large figures quoted by the Parliamentary Secretary as to the enormous number of houses that have been built, so large indeed that, were this enormous increase to continue for the next two or three years, this overcrowding Bill would not have been necessary. Of course, the truth is that all that private enterprise is doing now, broadly speaking, is just mopping up and soaking up what is left of the demand for houses for sale.
The vast majority of the enormous numbers of houses built in the last year or two have been built to sell very largely to hard-driven people who find it very difficult to raise the deposit, and who often enough have to realise on their house, or divide it into two and assist the overcrowding problem which this Government is so anxious to solve. It is perfectly dear from the figures published in the White Paper, if one looks on page 6, at the number of houses built in three successive half years of the small type, rate able value not exceeding £13—£20 in Greater London—less than a quarter of them are occupied by persons other than the owners. In the case of the rather larger houses the proportion it the occupation of people not the owners is about one-sixth, which means that the whole policy of the 1933Act has succeeded as the right hon. Gentle-
man meant it to do, and as the present Chancellor of the Exchequer hoped it would do in 1923, 10 years earlier, when he introduced his Act to restore, revive, and reinvigorate private enterprise to solve this problem. The extent of the solution of this problem is to be found in the handful of houses which have been built to let, and because of the complete collapse of the1933 Act and of the fact that directly it had produced—let us keep the numbers in mind-3,513 houses up to the last day of 1934,some other policy had to be devised. I know what the reply of The right hon. Gentleman is going to be to this presently. The 1933Act has been a complete failure, and the right hon. Gentleman knows it. He deliberately butchered the 1924 Act, he sabotaged part of the Act of 1930, to let loose these forces of private enterprise, and he has had to come back to this House to devise anew substitute and to invoke the aid of local authorities and public utility societies to deal with the housing problem, which must lie very heavily on his conscience, as it must on the conscience of every Minister of Health.
The reason for this Bill is the failure of the Act of.1933. This is only one more illustration of the gyrations of the present Government. They nearly always revert to where they started from. The right hon. Gentleman will have a Health Insurance Bill next week which will go back to where we were in 1931, or nearly so. I am glad to welcome their going back to where we left the situation, but I am bound to say that, from every point of view, they can claim no credit for it. It only means that, after bitter experience, common sense prevails, and we have some modicum of common sense in this Bill. What does the Bill do 7 It invents anew problem. There is one housing problem, and that is that there are not sufficient good houses to go round. That is the housing problem, and it is complicated by the special conditions of slum houses. That problem is an intensification of the fact that there are not enough good houses to go round. Because there were not enough good houses to go round in 1919, 1923, 1924 and 1930successive Governments pro vided financial assistance from the Exchequer to help to provide more houses so that there would be enough to go
round on terms which people could afford to pay.
The right hon. Gentleman, following in the steps of his early predecessor in 1923, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, handed over this problem of dealing with the situation to the very people who helped to create it, the private builder and the speculator. That failed, and he has to come back to the House because he realises that he must get the powerful aid of the non-profit making organisations, the local authorities and the public utility societies. It is very difficult for him to comeback to the House and say: "I made an awful mess of the 1933Act; what is the way round it?" Being advised by skilful advisers he gets the idea about overcrowding. Nobody lives in an overcrowded house for fun. They do not do it because they like it but because they cannot find any house, or they can only find other accommodation on terms which are beyond the resources of the family.
The real way to deal with overcrowding is to build more houses and not to make a, fuss about it. The right hon. Gentle man, in order to get back on the old tracks that were laid 16 years ago and which have been followed by successive Governments, had to invent a new category, a new aspect of the problem. I am very grateful to think that he has come back to the point of view that the problem of working-class housing, as things are now, cannot be settled without State aid. Having decided that the overcrowding programme is a good dodge and a good way of getting back to the housing line, the right hon. Gentleman had to establish a definition. We have had Debate after Debate and I do not propose to detail in any detail with the standard of overcrowding. He has tried to draw a distinction between a penal definition as to what is illegal and the standard in the Bill. I have on more than one occasion said that once you get a standard, whether penal or not, in an Act of Parliament people begin to regard it as the gospel and private builders—goodness knows that building by-laws in many towns are hopelessly out of date—will tend to build down to that standard. Local authorities, under pressure, will tend to builddown to the standard which the Government and the right hon. Gentleman are trying to establish, and
there will be an inevitable tendency for people to say that houses can be occupied up to or down to that standard as the case may be.
There is only way way of fixing an overcrowding standard and that is to do it by reference to bedroom accommodation. The only standard of this kind that stands as the law of the land up to now is to be found in Clause 37 of my Act of 1930. I will not detain the House by reading it, but if hon. Members will look at it they will see that that is a bedroom standard.

Mr. CAPORN: How many houses did it produce.

Mr. GREENWOOD: So far as I and my friends are concerned we will never accept a housing standard where the living room can be regarded as a bed room;never in any circumstances. I have warned the right hon. Gentleman on every conceivable occasion, and I warn the House. It is a wrong provision and one that a later Government will have to remedy. I am satisfied that public opinion will not stand for it.
We have had a very interesting side light on the intentions of the Government with regard to flat development. I have been challenged so often when I have said that the real inspiring motive behind the larger subsidy for flat development was to persuade the local authorities in the provinces to build flats. I am not entering into the merits of the case, but only recalling the fact that provincial authorities, with the exception of the very large ones, do not like tenements. I think the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary has proved what I said on the Second Reading of the Bill, in Committee and on Report that the tendency of this Bill is in that direction. I have no objection to flat development, but if we are going to embark on a very large scale programme of flat development in the provinces, with the little knowledge that we have about it and without a public opinion that is ripe for it, I think it is wrong.
The Bill abolishes improvement areas for which provision was made in the Act of 1930. That is a mistake. The re development areas in the Bill are the alternative to the provisions with regard to improvement areas. The whole purpose of the improvement areas Clause in the Act of 1930 was to prevent districts
degenerating into slums. That is entirely different from the process of re-development. It was intended to stop middle-class areas of the past becoming over crowded working-class areas of the future. I do not like this process whereby the working classes take little bits, cast off bits of the second-hand houses of the well-to-do, but it is happening in many parts of London and in many large towns. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has advanced the cause of housing by depriving local authorities of the power to demark improvement areas with a view to stopping their demoralisation down to the slum level.
We have had more than one Debate on the question of housing management com missions. On more than one occasion I have expressed not only my own view but that of my colleagues on this question. I regard with the greatest apprehension this developing move of demunicipalisation in the ranks of the Tory party. That is what it means, and I say that we are not bound by anything which appears in this Bill. If it should be that I or any body else has to deal with these problems the Housing Management Com mission will go.
This is an attempt, and a very unwise attempt, on behalf of this Government to go back on the tracks of normal municipal development. When we raised this matter before we got no kind of sympathy. The Government, indeed, speaks with two voices. I blame myself for my ignorance but I find it difficult to follow Scottish Housing Bills, they are rather too deep for me, and use language which is not the language I normally use. After we have been refused any kind of consideration to permit a local authority to change its mind after it has set up a Housing Management Commission I find that the Scottish Bill makes provision for this. Scotland is often ahead of us, unfortunately, in these kinds of matters. It must be that the Secretaries of State are more open to reason or that Scottish Members have more winning ways. The situation in this Bill is that if a local authority hands over its responsibilities and its existing housing estates to a Housing Management Commission it can not undo it. That is a monstrous position in which to place local authorities. Even if the policy was right a local authority is entitled to demand that it shall be able to change its mind, if it is in the public
interests. We pleaded with the right hon. Gentleman to meet us in this matter. Now I discover in the Scottish Housing Bill, Clause22, Sub-section (4) which says:
A Housing Management Commission may, on the application of the local authority, be dissolved by order of the Department, and any such order may provide for the re-vesting in the local authority of the property vested in the Commission and for any other matter consequential on the dissolution of the Commission.
I ask: Are the Government going to speak with a single voice on this question? What is good enough for Scotland is surely good enough for those who live south of the Tweed. I have no doubt that this question will be raised in another place, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give us a concession which appears in the original draft of the Scottish Bill. My next point is with regard to compensation. A few concessions have been made, but almost all to the advantage of the owners of property. I have not noticed that anybody else has got any concession of any value whatever. The right hon. Gentleman only last Thursday got himself into a most dreadful tangle through accepting an Amendment to a recommittal motion which was most irregular. I have searched to find an example and there is no recorded case of a Minister of the Crown accepting a re committal motion of the kind which was included in the motion of the hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman). I am quite aware that I proposed a recommittal motion which was accepted, but that was when I was out of office. All.the concessions which have been made have been in the interests of property owners; practically none of amore generous kind. In the compensation the right hon. Gentleman has not provided that a single penny of it goes back to the local authority. It is so easy to be generous when somebody else has to foot the bill. The right hon. Gentle man is responsible for the Exchequer subsidy but he is not responsible for the burdens which he casts on the rates by the little concessions he has handed over to the landlords.
It is not as though his financial assistance was on the generous side. The most generous aspect of his assistance is that to be given to the building of tenements, but when it comes to cottage buildings we have it from the Parliament-
ary Secretary that it is to be a discretionary subsidy. That is quite a new thing in housing subsidies. The assistance which is provided by the Bill is not generous, and in view of the rather stingy provisions made to local authorities one would have thought that the concessions made by the right hon. Gentleman would have been more generous. No, the little trader or the large multiple shop can go on for ever and ever being subsidised by the local authority. It is perfectly clear, as Clause 52 'stands now, that people who live in one borough can claim compensation if the local authority likes to give it in an adjoining borough, and goon for ever and ever; all at the expense of the local authority. We have never had any explanation from the Minister that it means anything different.
On these benches we have never opposed any Housing Bill which we thought would deliver any houses. We have criticised them and done our best to improve them. We have not opposed this Bill in the old factious party spirit. We have made our criticisms of it, and no doubt shall still criticise it. The Bill can go forward to another place, but I would give the House this impression of mine which time will probably prove to be true. This Bill will make no contribution to the solution of the housing problem. Local authorities have sufficient on their hands just now with the operation of the 1930 Act, which is more generous to them than the 1935 Bill. I had almost forgotten that I had anything to do with the 1930 Act; these slum crusaders seem to have stolen all the thunder and all the limelight. It is their crusade now.
Local authorities will prefer the 1930 Act to the provisional discretionary subsidy which is provided under this Bill. Their problem cannot be segregated as an overcrowding problem. It is primarily a housing shortage problem, and if this Bill had been an honest Bill it would have come forward with a straightforward subsidy on the lines of the 1924 Act, to enable local authorities to meet the housing shortage. The restrictions in this Bill will limit the activities of local authorities. The financial aid is not sufficiently generous. The standard of overcrowding is deplorable and will hang round the Minister's neck all his public life.
If the Bill provides houses no one will be more pleased than myself. I will give the right hon. Gentleman credit if he can make any contribution to the solution of this problem. If in a month or two from now—one never knows when the right hon. Gentleman may depart, or when we may dissolve—the right hon. Gentleman can report that the Bill is producing houses, I shall be the first to get up and offer him my congratulations. But I doubt whether the Bill will do that. I think there has been a good deal of misplaced energy spent on the Bill, energy which might have been devoted to a Bill to deal with the problem with which the 1924 Act was designed to deal, that is the general shortage of houses for working people, to be let at rents which they can afford to pay.

9.8 p.m.

Sir P. HARRIS: I want to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary on his very eloquent speech. My only regret is that he had so small a House. It is one of the best efforts, if not the best effort, that he has made, and one of the most eloquent statements in favour of a for ward housing policy that I have heard in this House. The hon. Gentleman passed many bouquets all round the House, both to the Opposition, to my friends and my self here, and to hon. Members on his own side below the Gangway. If the Minister did not meet with any factious opposition, if he got the co-operation of the whole Committee upstairs and of Members here on the Report stage, it is due to the unfailing good humour and tact of both The Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, and also largely due to the problem itself. We are so conscious of the size of the problem and its urgency and complexity, that we are a little generous to each other in our attempts to solve the problem.
The Parliamentary Secretary spoke of the Bill as a Bill of great magnitude. It certainly is, with its 90 pages and 93 Clauses. I doubt whether any Member of the House has mastered every Clause of the Bill. It is a departmental Bill dealing with a great number of details that have arisen in the process of administration and as a result of experience both in the Department and among local authorities. When we come to its aims we find that it deals with two quite separate questions. The first is contained in the Preamble and refers to
overcrowding. In so far as the Bill is aimed at the abatement of overcrowding it has general approval. Another part which is not mentioned in the Preamble is tucked away in one or two Clauses in the middle of the Bill—Clause 60 in particular—which will not add a single house, and in my view will slow up matters in dealing with the vital problem of slum clearance.
My criticism of the overcrowding Clauses has all along been that they are needlessly complex and likely to be slow in action. In Committee I tried very hard to get a time limit introduced. Allover the country local authorities are to start surveys to find out the size of the problem according to the standard laid down in the Bill. I suggested that they should not have a roving commission to go on indefinitely, but that there should be power to demand that schemes should come to completion within 12months. I repeat that there is no need to set up all this elaborate machinery. The in formation required is in the archives of almost every local authority, or if it, is not there the authorities are guilty of serious negligence, for since the Wheatley Act this information has been called for. The demand was reiterated in the Act of 1930, known as the Greenwood Act. By some rather sinister circumstances that provision is deliberately deleted from this Bill. Now we are to have this further survey to find out whether the very low standard in the Bill has been reached.
We had this afternoon a very long wrestle over the conditions in the Schedule. The Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary both admit that the standard is extraordinarily low. If this low standard is adhered to, even if the provisions of the Bill are carried out, I predict that at the end of it overcrowding will still be rife according to the public health standards in most of our great industrial towns. I mentioned this afternoon that where you have a three-roomed tenement; very often half a house, in almost every case, where there are children under 10years of age you will have the children sleeping in the living room. For the first time in an Act of Parliament that is to be recognised as not overcrowding. Housing authorities through out the country and many of those housing associations which have done such splendid work in connec-
tion with this question are alarmed at the fixing by Act of Parliament of such a low standard. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary took part in the passage of another Act of Parliament dealing with housing at the end of 1932 and the begining of 1933. On that occasion he made a very interesting speech in favour of private enterprise in the course of which he said:
We come to bury the subsidy, not to praise it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1932; col. 6,51, Vol. 273.]
That was two years ago and now we have a reincarnation of the subsidy. He has to recognise now in the light of experience that to make real progress in solving this intricate problem it is necessary to have the willing co-operation of the local authorities. Experience also proves that you will not get that cooperation unless there is the stimulus of some financial assistance from the State. Unfortunately, from my point of view, the stimulus of the subsidy is hedged round with very severe restrictions and is weighted very much in favour of the flat as against the cottage.
I do not want it to be thought that I am opposed to or critical of that part of the Bill which offers financial assistance for the construction of fiats in our great cities where the price of land is high. On the contrary, when the 1933 Act was going through the House I spent considerable time in trying to persuade the Minister of the necessity of financial assistance if the problem of housing in the centres of our great towns was to be solved. I pointed out then that the cost of land in the centers of towns and cities was prohibitive against unaided private enterprise. In so far as the Government have recognised that fact I am duly grateful. Obviously, in the centres of great towns, where the population is congested and the price of land high, if men are to be housed near their places of employment, it is essential to build up wards and to construct flats. Someone has described it as a victory that that policy has been accepted by the Government and that they have recognised the necessity of departing from their principle of private enterprise in this respect.
The working-class family flat, however, at best can be only a substitute for a home. It can never give the same satisfaction or provide the same opportunity for home life as the cottage. I find that
in the East End of London and in industrial centres, while many of the people go into flats, they do so under protest because there is no alternative. Even the small antiquated working-class cottage, without amenities, is preferred more often than not to the very best flat in the most modern building for this practical reason. Where a man has a cottage he has either a garden or a back yard, and he can keep poultry or rabbits and at the same time have the opportunity for a little social life and social amenities. It may surprise the right hon. Gentleman to know that in the most overcrowded area of London, Bethnal Green, we have, among the slum dwellers, an efficient and successful poultry club and also a very well-organised and successful rabbit club. The poultry are kept in the back yards, and the rabbits produced in the little gardens, even of slum streets. These things are impossible in, the case of block dwellings.
My persistent criticism of this Bill has been that under it the subsidy automatically goes to the flat but not to the cottage. Owing to the financial limitations under which we have been working, it has been impossible to move any Amendments to that Clause of the Bill. It is true that the Minister, at his discretion, can give financial assistance to the construction of cottages, but that provision is so hedged round by restrictions and so limited by the wording of the Clause that we have little prospect of local authorities being helped by the State to proceed with cottage construction. The right hon. Gentleman may say that he has not put anything in the Bill of a more definite kind because it is not practicable to build cottages in the centre of London and other large cities. Of course it is not, but during the last few years under the Acts of 1923 and 1924 large estates have been bought all round our great towns and developed as garden suburbs, with cottages and open spaces nicely planned and laid out. The practical difficulty of getting working-class families out of congested districts to these estates has been that when the cost of travel is added to the rent, the expense is prohibitive. Unless it is possible artificially to lower the rent, with the assistance of a subsidy from the rates and taxes, you will never be able to draw
the population out from the centres to the new garden suburbs, and local authorities' estates that have been such a success up to the present while enjoying the advantage of Assistance in the form of a State subsidy.
Before we part with this Bill we ought to have a lead from The right hon. Gentle man on this point. Is he prepared to use the machinery of the Bill to encourage local authorities to rehouse a percentage of the people from over crowded areas in garden suburbs and cottage estates on the outskirts of our towns? If you attempt to rehouse them all, on the spot, in flat dwellings, you will only get another form of congestion, perhaps not so unsatisfactory as the present congestion, because the buildings are modern and better planned, but still unsatisfactory from the point of view of the health and well-being of the people. Then there is that aspect of the Bill already mentioned to which I take exception, namely, that contained in Clauses 60 and 62. Those Clauses alter the conditions under which slum clearances are carried out and, in so far as they treat more generously the occupier-owner, no one can offer any serious objection to them, but, in so far as they are going to make the great work of slum clearance slower and more expensive, I take serious exception to them. If the right hon. Gentleman would come down to a different basis of assistance, if he would say that in the light of experience the Government were prepared to increase the subsidy, in order to treat owners of property more generously, a case might be made out for his proposal. But under the machinery of this Bill the increased cost of this new basis of compensation will not come on the taxes or on the Ministry of Health; it will be a serious additional burden on the local authorities. That is a factor which in some areas at least will inevitably tend to slow up progress. We have had this basis of compensation in operation ever since 1919. Bill after Bill has gone through this House, piloted by every kind of Minister, including the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. No exception was taken to the basis of compensation. I believe that the basis of compensation was fixed as the result of an inquiry pre sided over by Sir Leslie Scott, at one time Solicitor-General. And I believe
that in practice the old basis has proved fair and just in the majority of cases.
We are inclined to forget that the slum problem is no new problem. Slums have not grown up since the War; they date right back to the year 1890 and the first great constructive Housing Act. In London the slums have been scheduled ever since 1900. If you go into the archives of the London County Council you will find a complete map with every slum and every bad area marked on it in red ink. These scheduled areas have been known not only to the local authorities, but also to the owners of house property. What is more serious, they have been known also to the house speculator; and these properties have been freely changing hands in the last five or 10 years. Decent men and women have not like downing slum property. They have been ashamed of it, and they have been only too willing to sell; and business men, property speculators, have brought. this property cheaply, because it was condemned property, because it was marked red, and because in due course it would be cleared away. They have known since 1919 that it would be cleared with-cut any compensation for the house, and with nothing except the value of the site cleared of buildings from a housing point of view.
The right hon. Gentleman comes along as the result of pressure and makes a handsome present to these owners of property—not at the expense of the tax payer, but at the expense of the local rates. Most of these properties have been bringing in—as the Parliamentary Secretary rightly pointed out—high profits and in some cases 300 per cent. of the capital value. He mentioned—and I was very much surprised to hear it from him—two cases of this character in his own constituency of Norwich. I could quote thousands of cases in London where owners of this property, having bought it cheap, have been receiving very large profits from their investments. They have, it is true, been prevented from making full use of its value. The majority of these sites in our great towns are of very great commercial value, but the owners have been prevented from selling them in the open market because of the Rent Restrictions Acts. Now the
Minister comes along and does away with the provision of the Act of 1919 and pro poses to give these gentlemen the commercial value and take away the reduction factor—which will quite largely add to the amount of compensation they will get. I think we are entitled to know, and I think the nation and the local authorities are entitled to know, what will be the cost of this change. The right hon. Gentleman said he had had an estimate made. He said the cost would be small. What does he mean by small? Will it be £1,000,000? Or £2,000,000? What extra burden will this change of policy mean to the local authorities? I think we are entitled to have that information.
This particular Clause—Clause 60—and those that follow are not going to add a single house or clear an additional slum. They are merely a contribution to a certain type of property owner who has felt the pressure of a forward policy under the Act of 1930.However, as far as I am concerned, I recognise that this Bill has got some good points. The Government now have changed their attitude and are asking local authorities for their co-operation in dealing with this problem is a step forward. For that we are thankful. We can only hope that when it comes to administration there will be the same driving force behind this Measure which, to do him credit, the right hon. Gentleman has applied to the problem of slum clearance. We have bad going through this House since the War Act after Act dealing with this subject. We had the Addison Act, we had the Chamberlain Act, we had the Mond Act, we had the Wheatley Act, we had the Greenwood Act, and now we have the two Hilton Young Acts—as I suppose they will be called after their parent. If they are to be successful, if they are to do what we really want them to do, and produce houses—which is the only real way to solve the housing problem—much will depend on the energy and initiative of the right hon. Gentleman. If he does show energy and initiative, they must produce some good results. As a Measure that will do something, however small, to lessen the congestion and reduce the difficulties of overcrowding by providing more homes to live in we shall not vote against this Bill.

9.34 p.m.

Miss CAZALET: When the history of the social legislation of this period is written, I feel sure that this Bill will go down as one of the most important ever put on the Statute Book. I should like not only to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary on his speech to-day, and on the capable and sympathetic way in which he and The Minister have con ducted the Bill through the whole of the Committee stage upstairs, but also on what I might describe as their steward ship during the last six months, the record of which, just printed in a White Paper from their Department, must appeal to Members to-day as most encouraging reading. The most important aspect of this Bill is undoubtedly the fact that for the first time in history we are laying down a standard of overcrowding and making any increase of that standard a penal offence. This is in itself, I think, as momentous a reform as the first Factory Act in the last century. We all admit that it may not be a perfect standard, and I hope that it will not be used in any way, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) said, as a "gospel." It is only a first step, but we will have far more chance of enforcing it than if we had allowed ourselves to be carried away by some of the Amendments moved by the Opposition. If these Amendments had been incorporated in the Bill, we should merely have had an Act of Parliament of words incapable of being translated into deeds and there fore accomplishing nothing towards the establishment of any standard whatever.
Representing as I do a London constituency, I welcome especially the schemes for redevelopment. Certain parts of London and other big cities have been crying out for action of this sort for along time, and I was more than glad to see the remarks made by the Chairman of the housing committee of the London County Council in introducing his Estimates the other day. He said that he hoped the powers conferred on local authorities by this Bill would enable the council effectively to undertake redevelopment, not only in the East End, but in other parts of London where redevelopment was the most effective, and, I think, the only effective method of dealing with overcrowded and in sanitary areas, including many of those large old-fashioned,
decaying, barrack-like mansions housing six or seven families, which were origin ally built for only one.
The whole success of enforcing the overcrowding standard and of redevelopment schemes depends on the amount of alternative accommodation that can be provided in the first place. I hope that the Minister will stimulate local authorities to do some new thinking on this matter. New methods and new action are required to meet the situation. That is where I believe a really strong advisory committee will be of enormous assistance, because it is essential that with vast redevelopment schemes on hand that what has been so well described as those factors of "place, folk and work" should all be taken into account simultaneously. That is why I welcome the assurance that the Minister gave us in Committee that he means to have a really expert body of men and women to help him on this advisory committee.
I am glad that the method of appeal in the case of slum clearance is not to be altered. In the Debates in Committee I was criticised by hon. Members for saying that I thought any alteration in the present procedure would retard the work of this Bill, the argument being that justice was more important than speed. It seems to me, from all I have been able to ascertain, that both justice and speed are going forward to-day hand in hand in this matter. That is what we all desire, and why I am glad that no alteration has been made. My last point is really an appeal to the Minister with regard to the architecture and the outside appearance of the new buildings. I know that it will not fall on deaf ears, as I realise the Minister is deeply concerned in this matter. We all rejoice at the speed of house construction during the last few years, but many of us cannot rejoice in the same way at the appearance of some of the buildings. Under this Bill we shall expect a further big increase in block dwellings and houses, and it is most important that the Minister should recognise his responsibility as what I might call the beauty specialist for the outside complexion of houses as much as for their inside standards and amenities. This is another matter inwhich the advisory committee may be of the greatest help.
Everybody ought to have a home fit to live in. Nothing, I suppose, makes so.
much difference to happiness as one's home. The rooms we live in, the stair case we go up and down, and the windows we look through make up so much of our day." These are not the words of the man in the street, but of the Minister of Health himself, whose heart as well as his brain, I believe, is thrown into this great task. They represent the spirit of this Bill and of the whole housing policy of the Government. With these words in mind, and judging by the huge success of the slum clearance scheme inaugurated by the Minister and the success of his other housing policies, one is entitled to feel assured that not only will this be another great Measure to the credit of the National Government, but, what is far more important, a step forward towards the betterment of the conditions of the people.

9.42 p.m.

Mr. McENTEE: I want to remind the Minister, without reading them, of the speeches that he made when he introduced the 1933 Act and the speeches that some of us made who were critical of the result that he hoped from that Act. The Minister told the House then that he had had several consultations with the building societies and that, as a result, he would be able through the building societies to release large sums of money which they had available. As a consequence of reasonably cheap money and of the general reduction in the cost of building materials, and, incidentally. a reduction of wages, the cost of house building had been reduced to such an extent that he could assure the House that houses would be built in sufficient quantities to let in the future without the aid of the subsidy, The Minister at that time was hopeful, and he got the general support of the party that will be willing to vote for him tonight. The Bill, however, did not produce the houses. We heard earlier from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) that the actual result of those promises made to the Minister was only 3,513 houses. In a word, all the Minister's statements at that time were entirely wrong. They were based on lack of accurate information and on promises which he said he had but which were not fulfilled. They were based on his own definite lack of information and
experience in regard to the housing problem.
It has been said to-night—in other words—that there is only one housing problem, and that it is the problem of providing reasonably decent houses for the people who cannot get them at the present time. The Minister's statement in 1933 was that private enterprise could provide those houses without a subsidy and would do so. Private enterprise has not done it and will not do it. Now the Minister comes back to the subsidy. Apparently he has learned, by the utter failure of his Act of 1933, that unless the Treasury provide a subsidy it is impossible to get houses to let at rents which can be paid by the people requiring houses. With his action in recognising again the necessity of a subsidy all of us would agree if we were reasonably hopeful that under this Bill we should get large numbers of houses, but I say that he will not get the houses by this Bill, any more than by the Act of 1933.
I have a word to say in regard to a difference between The Minister and my self about a statement made by me on a suggested new Clause dealing with the amenities in houses. I said then, and repeat, that those amenities have been reduced by the action of the Ministry, particularly during the last few years, to such an extent that the houses are not, in my view at any rate, what can be called decent houses for the working people. The Minister said that he did not accept my statement; in fact, his words meant that it was untrue; they could not have meant anything else. I have since got into touch with the people who were associated with me on deputations which attended the Minister of Health and with the officials of the local authority of which I was at that time a member and of which I am still a member, and I have here a letter reviewing some of the circumstances at that time. I want to bring the Minister back to this point, because I consider it is of the greatest importance in relation to the type of houses we are to build. To build houses lacking in ordinary amenities and not of a sufficiently high quality to enable them to last the period of the loans is a bad policy, and ought not to receive the support of this House.
I have occupied practically every position in the building trade. I was a work man in it for many years and worked on all types of buildings. I have been a foreman, a clerk of works, a manager and to some extent—a very small extent—I have been myself a builder. I say that the standard of quality of the smallest type of cottages built prior to the War was better than the standard of modern houses such as are sanctioned by the Minister at the present time. Nobody who knows anything about the standard of quality of buildings will dispute that fact. If that he so, and it is so, then I say that the policy of building down to a standard so low as to be below the lowest standard in house building prior to the War is a wrong policy. I have here a statement from the clerk of my own local authority which I had asked him to look up, because I wished to re fresh my memory about the attitude of the Minister. In his reply to me before The Minister said that the policy of the Ministry was not so much to reduce the amenities of the house: He said: "We do not definitely lay down that we will not permit reasonably decent amenities." Of course they do not, but they do lay down a standard of cost—anything in excess of it they will not sanction—which makes it impossible for any council to give reasonably decent amenities in their houses.
I have a letter in which I am reminded of only some of the things which we were compelled to do because of the policy of the Ministry; and the same thing happened to every other local authority that happened to ours. We were compelled to put in two-coat instead of three-coat plaster. We were advised that that was one of the ways in which to reduce costs. We were told that two coats of paint, and paint of an inferior type to what we were using, was sufficiently good for this type of house. We were told that solignum was quite as good for a working class house as paint, or ought to be quite good enough. We were told that wardrobe cupboards were not necessary. Up to that time the Ministry had sanctioned them, but we were told that cupboards could be done without. We were told that the glazed fronts which we were putting into kitchen dressers could be done without. We were told that the hot water system was not really
necessary in our houses. We were told that many other things could be done without. They did not say, "You must not do this," of course they did not, but they said that the cost of the houses must be kept down to so low a figure that these amenities could not be provided.
It is mere nonsense for the Minister to say that his Department was not responsible and did not out out the amenities from the houses. I have a whole list of houses which have been built, with the actual reductions which took place from time to time because of the necessity of cutting down casts on the instruction of The Minister. My own council were so incensed at the lower standard which the Ministry endeavoured to impose that they paid£10,000 out of the local rates rather than reduce the amenities of the houses in the way we were asked to reduce them by the Minister. I wish to make these observations because there are Members in the House who might easily have been left under the impression that the statement I made previously was simple lying and could not be borne out by the facts. I say emphatically that it was the policy of the Minister that the costs must be reduced—reduce costs, reduce costs. That policy was imposed on local authorities to such an extent that it was impossible to build a house which they would be prepared to call a house with areas on able standard of amenities, at any rate such a standard as the Ministry them selves had sanctioned up to that time, and such as they would not have sanctioned had they thought it too high a standard.
The Minister said it was not a question of economy. Then what was it? He said, "Reduce the cost; educe the cost." I can only attribute it to the desire of the Minister for economy in the cost of building houses and in their amenities, or the money with which they would enable the people to build houses. Everybody will welcome the return of the subsidy, and everybody who knows anything about it, including the Minister, ought to admit that those who were critical of the 1933 Act were perfectly right, and that he was entirely wrong when he said the time had arrived when the subsidy could be done without, and we were entirely right when we knew the subsidy could not be done without if houses were to be built under the Act. Houses have not been built
under the Act to any appreciable extent. The Minister now recognises that fact and therefore comes back to the subsidy, and yet he has not the decency to admit the failure of his previous Act and to apologise to the House for many of the statements he then made.

9.56 p.m.

Mr. PEAT: The hon. Member for West Walthamstow (Mr. McEntee) has referred to the reduction in costs which, apparently, he thinks could only be achieved by reduction in amenities. I believe a reduction in costs could be obtained by increased efficiency. I believe the Advisory Committee under this Bill will have that effect.

Mr. McENTEE: I did not say that.

Mr. PEAT: I got the impression that that was in the hon. Member's mind. As one who has, in a very humble way, followed this Bill in Committee and on the Floor of the House, I am very glad to have this last opportunity of saying that I, personally, give it my wholehearted support. I believe that this Bill provides opportunities, and also emphasises obligations. I think that if the opportunities are taken, and the obligations are shouldered, this Bill is going to be a success. The greatest opportunity I can see is the appointment of the Advisory Committee, which I believe, will revolutionise the building of the right type of house in this country. I believe it will bring the ordinary uniformity of efficiency of building in this country up to the high level at which it should be. I believe through that we shall get a reduction in costs without a reduction in amenities.
Housing associations have a very great opportunity, because I believe that in the housing association we have the solution of how to build houses at the right price in the distressed areas where we have local authorities who cannot afford to put up the money to build houses whereas in the more prosperous parts of England they can afford to do so. In the consolidation of subsidies we have a great opportunity of focussing all our opportunities, all our available money for subsidies, in the right direction, namely, that of giving relief where it is most needed. I believe those are very great opportunities which come about in this Bill. As I have listened to the debate, I have been betting with myself as to how many of
the hon. Members who have been criticising this Bill through 99.9 per cent. of their speeches, and then ending up with vague praise at the end of them, will find their way into the aye or the no Lobby. The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) criticised the Bill almost all the way through his speech but ended up with faint praise. I shall be interested to see to which Lobby lie finds his way if there is a Division. [Interruption.] I under stand that there is not to be a Division, which answers my query.
The rest of the criticism seems to have been very largely based on the suspected infirmities of human nature. We have had the criticism that the Minister was not a fit and proper person to decide a case of compensation; that if he saw a property owner round the corner he would immediately make up his mind that he would have to be exterminated, and the case would go against him. I do not believe that. I believe that Ministers of the Crown are sufficiently servants of the Crown and of the people to be unprejudiced in carrying out their duties. We have also been told that the local authorities will be influenced by graft and pressure brought to bear on them. There may be difficulties in front of the local authorities, but, taking it by and large, they are well suited to under take the obligations that this Bill places upon them. I believe that this is a good democratic Measure; that democracy in this country rests on a general belief in the honesty and common sense of the people of this country. I believe that this Bill, therefore, being a democratic Bill, rests entirely, and must rest entirely, for its success on the way in which the people of this country accept it and put it into operation. As I believe in democracy, I believe it will be put into operation with the very best in tent, and without any let or hindrance.
Before I close may I say that I very much appreciate the way in which the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have dealt with this Bill, and the tact and patience they have shown, particularly in Committee, which, to my way of thinking, was one of the best examples of parliamentary procedure I have seen in the four years I have been in this House. I believe that the results of a great Measure like this may be slow, but they are cumulative in their effect.
I believe as the years go by we shall find that this Measure, which I am sure will be supported by the great volume of the people in this country, will bring more and more results, and that in time—and I believe in a very short time—we shall find the housing problem, which I quite agree is one problem, solved, and very largely by the Bill which is to get its Third Reading to-night.

10.2 p.m.

Mr. BERNAYS: I gather from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Peat)that he has private information that the Opposition are not going to vote against this Bill to-night. Having listened to some of the arguments of the Opposition to-night, I am not surprised. The arguments they have brought forward are of a character I can well understand they would not be very ready to back up in the Division Lobby. There has been a most remark able change in the attitude of the Opposition on this Bill. I have been refreshing my mind with some of the remarks on Second Reading, and I have paid particular attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood). He roared like the bull of Bashan against this Bill on the Second Reading and now, while I will not say he cooed at it, he got as near to cooing as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield can get. The change in the attitude of the Opposition is a great tribute to the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary for the way in which they have conducted this Bill from Second Reading to its close.
As a critic of some aspects of the policy of the Government, I should like to take this opportunity of giving whole-hearted support to the Bill. The merit of the Government's policy on housing seems to me that it has taken the housing problem as a whole. Other Ministers of Health have dealt with it piecemeal. They have introduced Housing Acts, but they have been applied to a limited sector of the front, and the result has been that the amount of ground gained has been narrow and of limited depth. Here, for the first time, we have an offensive all along the line. It began with the Housing Act, 1933. That was, as it were, the opening barrage. It cleared the sub-
sidy away. At the time, I must admit, I doubted the wisdom of clearing the subsidy away, but it has been abundantly justified in the event. It did set free the springs of private enterprise, and the result has been that we have this astonishing record in the number of houses built. It is no answer to this to wrangle whether these houses were built under the 1930 Act or under the1933 Act. The fact is that the houses have been built in immensely larger numbers than they were built under the Labour administration. The right hon. Gentle man the Member for Wakefield ignored the important point that the removal of the subsidy in the 1933 Act enabled the money that the State is prepared to spend on housing to be concentrated on the points where it was most needed. There has followed such a drive towards slum clearance that it may well be that within a measurable distance of time the slum house will be as much an anachronism as a hansom cab. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite laugh. I advise them to wait and see. The policy they are adopting on this Bill is wait and see-saw.
Now has come this overcrowding Bill. The Hindenberg line has been pierced, and we are now in sight of that victory over the housing problem which has baffled and eluded successive Parliaments. In connection with this overcrowding Bill, I am delighted that the Government successfully resisted all attempts to set up an independent housing tribunal to settle the standard of overcrowding. Such a task surely cannot be taken out of the hands of the Minister and of Parliament. The right standard of overcrowding is our own responsibility and we are answerable for that only to our constituents. The experiment of establishing an extra-Parliamentary body to deal with a vital social question like housing has failed in the case of the Unemployment Act. I do not want to go into that, but it is an indication that these vital social questions cannot be taken out of the control of Parliament, and I am delighted that the mistake has not been made in this Bill.
Taken as a whole, this Housing Bill and the legislation that has preceded it seems to me to represent one of the finest achievements of this National Government. As a Liberal, coming into this
House for the first time, I confess that I have always submitted any piece of social legislation to the measuring rod of the Liberal record from 1906 to 1914, when the existing foundations of our social structure were so well and truly laid. I cannot pay, from my point of view, any greater tribute to this Bill than to say that it is worthy to take its place by the side of the Unemployment Insurance Act, the Old Age Pensions Act and all the other great social Measures of that most fruitful epoch.

10.10 p.m.

Major MILNER: I am sure the Minister of Health will be happy to know that he has the unsolicited support of the hon. Gentleman who represents one of the Bristol Divisions as a Liberal. I hope the result may perhaps be that he may succeed in avoiding a contest there. [Interruption.] I do not know why the hon. Gentleman should take it on him self to attack this party. He referred to the Second Reading Debate and suggested that although on that occasion and on this occasion, this party had raised objections to the Bill, it did not carry those objections, or did not propose to carry those objections on this occasion, to a Division. If my memory serves me aright, the party did not carry its objection on the Second Reading to a Division.

Mr. BERNAYS: I think the hon. and gallant Member is wrong.

Major MILNER: Perhaps the hon. Member who has the record there will be good enough to look it up. My recollection is that throughout, the record of this party has been general approval of the principles of the Bill, but we have at all times in all places commented on the detailed provisions of the Bill, and have endeavoured to improve them, and the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have paid tribute to us, and particularly to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood).
There is one particular matter to which I desire to refer, because I hope my hon. Friends on these benches will forgive my taking a rather different view on this particular matter from that taken by some Members of the party who sat on the Committee. I hope they will permit me to express that difference in view. I refer to Clause 85 which, as the House will remember, provides for a reduction in the permitted sum which local authorities
may advance to purchasers of houses under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts. That sum at present is either £1,200 or£1,500, and the Bill proposes to reduce that sum to£800. I entirely approve of the reduction, and indeed, I think it would be in accord with the principles profess if the facility given to local authorities in this connection were done away with altogether. The reason I take that view is this: I desire, with the whole of my friends on these benches, the municipalisation of essential services, but I do so on one condition, that these ser vices are subject to public ownership and control.
When municipalities commence to hand out, either by loan or otherwise, sums of money to provide capital for the purchase of houses, there is no public ownership, and no public control. What is happening is that public money is being used to support private capitalists, indeed to create them, in the matter of house ownership—and let me say I am entirely in favour of a man owning his own house—without public ownership or public control, which should be a condition precedent to the handing over of public funds. There is no justification for the continuance of that facility, introduced in war time, or just after the War. It is not municipalisation, and it is certainly not Socialism. There is no difference, I would point out to some of my hon. Friends, between subsidising private owners to buy houses and subsidising shipbuilders, wheat-growers or beet sugar factories, and it is not in accordance with the principles to which we are attached.
I wish that that facility had been done away with altogether, first on general principles, and secondly because I am convinced that it must result in loss for the ratepayers. The costs of building societies are in the neighbourhood of 1 per cent. upon the amount advanced, and that covers administrative expenses, losses and so on. I invited the Minister of Health at Question Time to-day to tell me what was the cost incurred by local authorities. The answer was to the effect that the provision made was only per cent. I am sure no hon. Member will say that the difference between borrowing at 3i per cent. and lending at 3¼ per cent. is sufficient to cover the administration costs and the expenses of the local authorities. Authorities who are making use of the facility to which
I refer are doing so for the benefit of certain private owners who are able to buy houses costing £1,200 or£1,500, and at the cost of the other ratepayers. For those reasons I wish the right hon. Gentleman could do away with the facility, particularly as there are private facilities which are cheaper and more convenient than ever. I hold no special brief for the building societies, but it is a fact that the facilities which they offer are cheaper and better than they have ever been. Private capitalism should be supported from private sources and not from public funds. I hope at some future date there may be a better realisation of that principle.
The hon. Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays) has handed me a copy of the OFFICIAL REPORT, which indicates that, upon the occasion referred to, and upon reasoned Amendment, the House did divide, and that we supported that Amendment.

Mr. BERNAYS: Is not a reasoned Amendment tantamount to a Motion for rejection?

Mr. McKEAG: Is a reasoned Amendment unusual in the hon. and gallant Member's party?

Major MILNER: This party, differing from that represented by the hon. Member for Durham(Mr. McKeag), has always been able to give reasons for what it does. I should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman would give consideration to the points I have presented. I am somewhat troubled also as to the standard of accommodation set out in the First Schedule to the Bill, in regard to municipal estates. As I understand it, there is nothing to prevent a municipality from crowding up its tenants to the standard of the Bill. It would be quite possible for an economically-minded municipality so to arrange matters that its poorer tenants were crowded up, on thestandard of the Bill, into the cheapest and smallest accommodation, while letting dearer houses to smaller families of the better placed section of the population—a practice which, I believe, has prevailed in one or two places. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will take some steps—for example, by having are turn from local authorities—to ensure that that course is not adopted by the few who might con-
ceivably adopt it. We all know that there are some who would carry out slum clearance and de-crowding on the cheap, dividing the population by the well-known figure of five and building that number of houses. If that course were adopted, and all the houses were crowded up to the standard of the Bill, then, while the matter would look all right on paper, it would be quite wrong and contrary to the intention of the House.
With regard to the compensation pro visions, I supported the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman), because I believed, as I believe now, that, if any section of the property owning community is entitled to compensation when compensation is being given, the owner-occupier is so entitled. I cannot agree with the taste of the hon. Member's speech to-day, but I did support the Amendment when it came before the House. The proposal to give compensation to retail shopkeepers creates a precedent which the Government must expect to see extended. The principle which the right hon. Gentleman is setting up in the Bill is, as I understand it, that, when anyone suffers a loss as a result of some action of the community, he is entitled to be compensated for that loss. For example, when, if it comes to pass, Woolwich Arsenal is removed, and there is a clearance of population from Woolwich, every interest affected in that locality can logically claim compensation; or, whenever some change in national policy brings disaster on some particular trade, not only the heads of the businesses concerned, but the work-people concerned, or the miners in appropriate cases, ought to be able to come to this House with a claim for compensation. If that principle is adopted and is applied to the results of the imposition of tariffs and quotas and so forth, and if the workpeople are to be included, the consequences of the step we are taking in this Bill may be very far-reaching.
As regards the finance of the Bill, I regret that, notwithstanding the appeals which have been made to the right hon. Gentleman, the local authorities are not being assisted to bear the burdens imposed upon them by this Bill by the provision of a single penny from the national Exchequer. I would like the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister,
if he replies, to tell us whether it is expected or desired that the rates shall bear the extra expense incurred, or whether the housing authorities—local authorities and so on—will be allowed to put all those expenses on to the rents of the houses, or how the Minister pro poses that that extra expense shall be met. Will it come out of the rates or the rents? I am sure that in one case the ratepayers will have a just complaint, and that in the other case the tenants will have a complaint. I hope that at no distant date the national Exchequer will assume its just and proper obligations in that respect.

10.25 p.m.

Mr. S ELL EY: I should like to help the House in dealing with the point made so many times about taking off the subsidy for cottages. I do not know whether the House quite appreciate that this Bill in no way takes anything away from the 1030 Act. Under the 1930 Act, if you are displacing people from the slums and rehousing them on any cottage estate, the subsidy is there, as it has been the whole time. I cannot understand why hon. Members keep accusing the Government of having done something to take away from local authorities the very means by which they have been enabled to build houses. The Minister, in the Act of 1933 for the first time in housing history, linked up the subsidy with destruction. Anybody who has studied the housing problem of the country knows that, had this not been done and the subsidy had been confined to cottage estates or to any buildings where the local authority chose to build, so long as slums remained, they would have been occupied and been a festering sore and never removed. It is the fact that the Minister had the courage to come to this House and tell local authorities that "Unless you will link up your housing programme with the destruction of these hovels, I will not supply the money."
What are the facts so far as cottage estates are concerned? I presented to the London County Council a return covering some 900houses on the St. Helier estate just before last March twelvemonth. The position was that, with the State loss of£9, which was given as a subsidy, linked with the£4 10s. contribution from the London ratepayer, we were able to build houses and let them at the ordinary muncipal rent, and the
financial loss, instead of being £13 10s. was, minus the£9, £3 10s. only on the London ratepayer. After the National Government got going and established confidence, municipalities were able to raise money at something like 3 percent. It is that factor, the House should bear in mind, which has enabled local authorities to bridge the difference.
The complaint of hon. Members above the Gangway is that The Minister, under the Act of 1933, has been unable to pro duce the houses. I know that hon. Members above the Gangway say that any house built by private enterprise is not a house within the meaning of the Labour party's Act, It is something they do not like. They pay lip-service to it, and tell you that they like to see people own their own houses, but they say that it is no contribution to housing. I have been in the business for nearly40 years and I regard, particularly since I have been interested in the municipal side of the housing problem, every house of whatever sort as a contribution to housing. The figures which the Parliamentary Secretary gave this afternoon are a perfect answer. That Act has been thoroughly justified, doing away with the subsidy has been justified and this Bill is another step forward.
We have been told by the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) that it will produce no houses. I would suggest that he should ask his friends on the other side of Westminster Bridge whether they think that it will produce houses. We have been securing 600 acres of land to prepare for the very Measure which we are reading for the Third time to-night. The right hon. Gentleman and his friends fear that this Measure will be such a success that all their thunder will be taken away from them. We have proceeded on the right lines. We have not set the standard too high, but we are hoping that directly the opportunity presents itself the standard can be altered, and that when the next Government comes in it will be able to bring forward another Bill for tightening up the standard. The Minister of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary are to be congratulated. They are putting on the Statute Book a charter for the people of this country, and all that we have to do is to work with goodwill to bring it to fruition. I am sure that it is one of
the finest Measures ever placed on the Statute Book.

10.32 p.m.

Mr. ERNEST YOUNG: I join with other hon. Members in congratulating the Minister of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary on the general structure of the Bill. One expects a Measure of this magnitude to be shot at from many angles, but I believe that the value of the Bill outweighs any considerations put forward by the Labour Opposition. There is still one criticism and that is on the question of giving adequate compensation. I was very glad, as I said on the last occasion I spoke, that the Min ister made a concession and agreed to give one and a half times the rateable value as compensation for those who are dispossessed of their houses. That has been increased to three times the rateable value. I assume that that is the net rateable value, which means that any person who loses his house will receive, broadly speaking, about £18. That is not enough when one has to deduct the cost of the demolition, which is about £10, and when there may perhaps be a mortgage of £100 or£150 on the property. I wonder sometimes whether the right hon. Gentleman really appreciates what happens in a case like that, where a man has put down his life's savings to own a house, not knowing that it will be eventually included in a clearance area. He has the building society mort gage to carry, possibly for another nine or 10 years. The result is that for all that period he has to pay practically double the amount of rent which he anticipated he. would have to pay when he took the house. In those cases special consideration ought to be paid to those people who have this heavy burden to carry.

Mr. LOGAN: With due respect, will the hon. Member kindly tell the House what building society would advance money on houses such as he has described?

Mr. YOUNG: The answer would depend upon the surveyor who goes round to survey the property. I could take the hon. Member to many houses not far from here which are not really slum houses and would never be considered to be slum houses if they had not been included in a clearance scheme. It is sometimes
that inclusion which turns a house from a decent house into as lum house because it is in an area which is to be cleared. There are owners of property who are not occupants of their houses, who also are entitled to some compensation when their property is taken from them. For many years past it has been the general practice among poor people, shopkeepers and the like, to save their money and invest it in property so that in the event of their passing away their widows will have an income from the rents of these small houses. They are not speculators in the conventional sense; they are not rack renters who are despoiling their tenants, but they hope to get a small and secure income from property in which they have invested their money. It seems a great shame that some provision has not been made for people whose money is sunk in property under the impression that it would give them the same security as if it had been invested in Government or other securities.
Nothing has been said about site value—and this is my last point. Whatever condition the edifice may be in the value of the land increases automatically as the years go by. The present position is that, if a local authority takes over the property, and does not do anything with it, it may prevent the owner of the land using it until the whole area has been replanned, which maybe a matter of some years. If the Minister had been sufficiently generous or sufficiently wise to have said that in these special cases adequate compensation for site value shall be paid and that in every case where a local authority takes over the property they shall demolish it at the public expense and not throw the demolition charges on the shoulders of the outgoing residents, we, should have had a Bill which would have satisfied a sense of justice which most people feel has been outraged by this descent upon private property, almost amounting to confiscation in some cases. In spite of the objections which may have come from some hon. Members I believe that the general sense of the British public would have been more satisfied and they would have been less uneasy than they are now, when they realise that the Government have set a precedent almost amounting to confiscation of property and are asking what the Government are going to take away next. On the whole, the Bill
is a good one. I have had 40 years' experience of the building trade. I think it is the best housing Bill we have had since the War finished, and I hope that it will fulfil the predictions of the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary and of those who have spoken so optimistically of it, and that it will he the beginning of a, solution of our housing and slum problem which has perplexed this country for so many years past.

10.38 p.m.

Mr. BOSSOM: I want to congratulate the Minister that for the first time in our housing legislation he has made it his business to find out exactly what the problem meant. He first of all called for a thorough survey of the slums, and now he is calling for a survey of overcrowding. I congratulate him on cutting out a lot of talk about housing and getting down to the real facts in order to find out what is really necessary. The result will be that he will be able, with the aid of his previous undertakings, to cure the situation. I also congratulate him on the report we had yesterday of the huge increase in private enterprise which has taken place. It is a great credit to him. Although he has been criticised by certain hon. Members, there is no getting away from the fact that a lot of houses are being built to-day at a price which the worker can afford and that it is not necessary to provide a subsidy when private enterprise can do the work. But there is one condition in connection with that to which I should like to call his attention. I am particularly anxious that this great conception of his shall be carried through to completion without interruptions other than those that are inevitable. There was a certain amount of unemployment in the building industry, but the vast work that the Minister has caused to be done has taken up that slack, and now we have got almost to a, point where, in our key industries, we have not any unemployment. I asked a question the other day as to the unemployment in certain trades. The Minister replied that he had not that information. I inquired from the trade itself. I found that the bricklayers, a key industry, had a very small amount of unemployment.
When we realise that this Bill has to produce the houses in face not only of slum clearance work and private enterprise, but also a large Air programme,
we have to be very careful lest we find that the men in the key industries are not available when we want them. The Bill contemplates a vast expenditure of public money. It does not in any way provide for an increase in the cost of building, nor does it do anything to prevent an increase in the cost of building. The Minister is to have the assistance of an advisory committee. We do not know of whom the advisory committee is to consist, or how far it is to be given power, but I believe that if that committee is to succeed the Minister must give it the power of planning widely. The Bill, as has been said on all sides, is a Housing Bill, and housing consists of building houses, not of making laws, and it calls for men td build the houses. We know that con current with the work to be undertaken under the Bill there is the great Air expansion programme to be carried out, and we know that the Air work will draw men away from the towns. As a matter of fact it is doing so already. If inquiry were made it would be found that the men around Salisbury Plain are being attracted to the Air work and are not available for house-building.
We cannot build buildings without having an outside to them, and the man needed for the outside work is the bricklayer. I find from the secretary of the trade union concerned that in the bricklaying trade the unemployment is between 7 and 8 per cent. only. We find from various estimates that the need is for between500,000 and 2,000,000 new habitations. Those are estimates, but they are the best that have been made. Quite rightly the Minister is having a survey made to find out the exact figures. Let us take the lowest, 500,000 habitations, either new or reconditioned, to satisfy the needs of overcrowding. Assume that that work is to be completed in a. period of five years. It means 100,000 habitations a year, and in round figures a cost of about £30,000,000.
About a. week ago I asked what was the total building expenditure in this country yearly. The last year for which figures were available was 1930, and I was told that the total building investment yearly was about £234,000,000. Let us assume that to be increased to £300,000,000. It means.that this Bill contemplates an in crease of not less than 10 per cent. over what is being done to-day. When we
realise that that is to be carried forward at the same time as our big air expansion programme, it will be seen that we have here a matter for very serious consideration. We will not get this work done un less the Minister gives the very widest powers to this Advisory Committee, and we all believe that if the Committee is given those powers it can revolutionise the building industry in this country.
There are other conditions which ought to be carefully considered by the Advisory Committee but I will not go into them now. I would urge on the Minister however, that he should try to standardise and modernise the building regulations, which are out of date. I would also ask him to ensure that there will be an opportnity of using new and improved methods, without having examinations of them by 1,500 local authorities before they are allowed. I also hope that lie will have a large broad-gauge time progress schedule made of all this work for the entire country. We must not forget that in 1920 no investigation was made as to the number of men or the amount of material available and the result was that the price of a house went up from, say,£350 to about £1,000. We do not want a repetition of that and I am sure that if the Minister will give the Advisory Committee the necessary authority, it will be possible to prevent such a situation developing again. The Minister has produced a Measure, which, with the energy he puts into dealing with the housing problem, can be made an historic one. It is a Measure which, if properly carried out can modernise the building industry. If the building industry is modernised, as this-Measure can modernise it, it will mean a saving to the nation of an amount equal to 6d. in the £ on the Income Tax or equivalent to paying the entire cost of the projected air development. My authority for that statement is to be found in the views held by the building trade operatives, the building trade employers, the architects and the surveyors. In congratulating the Minister on what he has done in this Measure, I ask him again to give the widest powers he can to the Advisory Committee.

10.49 p.m.

Sir H. YOUNG: I must feel a deep sense of the occasion on arriving at the final stage in the House of Commons of this great Measure, especially when it
falls to me to make the concluding speech for the Government in this Debate. Like all creatures born to live for a long time this Bill has been a long time in gestation. It is based upon 15years of intensive and varied experience of housing conditions since the War and many experiments in one direction and another. It is based also upon prolonged study of housing conditions by those responsible for its inception. It has been preceded by the closest possible consultation—I think closer and more frank consultation than has ever been before—with the local authorities who will have to be active in its administration. Finally, it has received from the House a long and careful consideration and a consideration which has been of so sympathetic a nature, that I desire here t6 pay my tribute of thanks and appreciation to the House for its reception of the Measure. Never has a Bill been more sym pathetically dealt with in Committee, or indeed on the Floor of the House, than this Bill. But the particular feature of this Measure as regards its history, which should encourage one's hope that so far as it is possible to command success beforehand success has been ensured for it, is that it is part of a long and an ordered plan for the development of housing policy by His Majesty's Government.
In modern battles, victory is usually found to be most easily won by the method of successive waves of attack, each following the other according to programme, and each timed to arrive so that it produces its maximum effect, and in creases the effect of that which went before. Somewhat of that sort has been the plan of campaign of the Government in its attack on the housing problem. There have been three successive waves of attack. First, there lease of private enterprise to make its contribution, a measure which has certainly been accompanied by the most conspicuous success, as is disclosed by the figures of housing returns which have just been published. The second wave was the wave of attack on the slums. The legislative provisions came from the Measure passed by the late Labour Government. That we recognise and appreciate. The Labour Government put the Act of 1930 on the Statute Book, but, unfortunately, they left it there, and an Act which remains on the Statute Book is not much good in the world of
practical affairs. We have pulled the Measure off the Statute Book and sent it scurrying round the country, and the result is seen in the conspicuous achievement in the replacement of slum houses. At the latest, but possibly not the last, we come to the wave of attack represented by the overcrowding Bill.
What I would fain do in the few moments in which I shall occupy the attention of the House is to make one or two observations on what appear to me to be the essential outline which a housing endeavour of this sort must always follow in such a country a sours if it is to be successful. In support of those ideas, which I would state as simply and clearly as I can, I would only adduce the figures of those remarkable results which we have just attained, and which have just been published. If you are to succeed in solving our housing evils, you must, in the first place, provide the fullest possible freedom and scope to make the largest possible contribution to what I call the normal sources of supply in private enterprise. You must obtain from them the maximum of help in providing as many houses, and houses down to the smallest, as possible. Set the field clear for them in the first place. That is the greatest contribution that you can make. That we have done, and we have seen the astonishing result in the swingeing wave of the output of private enterprise, and, what is more, a steady advance on the part of. unassisted private enterprise to provide smaller houses to let for the poorest-paid wage earner. Let private enterprise build as small houses as it will, and let us always give it the fullest possible scope.
Your second rule must be this, must it not? Under existing conditions always to recognise that there is a margin of houses needed for the lowest-paid wage-earners, and therefore at rents so low that under present economic conditions private enterprise unassisted cannot provide them. We have to recognise the existence of that margin. We have to recognise that the demand that exists there has to be provided by public effort with the assistance of public funds, or not at all. That is the second rule, which, I venture to think, all policies must follow. When we are devoting public effort to house production, when we are devoting public funds to it in order to provide this margin of accommodation for the lowest-paid
wage-earner at the lowest rents, we must make that effort direct. We must ensure that the efforts and the assistance of public funds go to the production of houses which shall be directly available for the class for whom they are erected. That is the secret of the success which has attended our recent efforts in dealing with the housing problem. It is that for the first time we have said that the houses provided with the assistance of public funds shall be provided for those who need them, and for those who need them only, that is, for the slum dweller and now for the overcrowded.
It is because that obvious link was not found in the chain of previous housing efforts that, although after the Armistice we built over 2,000,000 houses, very largely with the assistance of public funds, at the end of it overcrowding and slums were practically as bad as they had ever been. We have a faculty in this nation for profiting by experience, and for learning by the old method of "cut and try." I believe that the lessons we have learned together in the course of our legislative work in this House are the lessons to be learned for our guidance in future policy, and that any Government or Minister who departs from them in proposing legislation or the expenditure of public funds departs from them at the peril of waste and failure. So we come to this Measure which is before the House to-night. I am taunted by hon. Members opposite that this is a recantation of the Act of 1933. Unless and until hon. Members opposite understand the difference between the controlled subsidy as it will be paid under this Bill for the reduction of overcrowding, and the general subsidies which we abolished in 1933, I do not think the yare qualified to form even an elementary judgment. The test of a real understanding is to apprehend the difference between the controlled subsidy and the general subsidy. It is because our subsidies formerly were general that they failed. It is be cause our subsidies now are controlled and directed to the class which require them, that they succeed, and this Measure is a development of the policy of con trolled subsidies by extending them from the slum dweller to the overcrowded.
I would dwell for a moment on one or two essential aspects of this Bill. It may be useful to indicate what our hopes may be of this Bill, and how large are the
possibilities—nay, the certainties—of its utility. I want to say this in the first place. The House remembers that this Bill provides powers for dealing with the old areas in the inner parts of our towns that need redevelopment. For success in this work, the first essential is to work upon a large enough scale. If the powers in the Bill are to be used in a merely tinkering spirit to put a few houses right here, and part of a street there, we miss a great opportunity. What is required and desired is that the local authorities should realise that they have here a weapon efficient from the financial point of view and efficient from the legal point of view with which to put right on a large scale the bad mistakes of past development in our towns and that to do so will need courage and vision. Great achievements have been accomplished in recent years in developing the areas round our towns, but the old centres are left, not good enough for the standards of modern accommodation 'and in some respects a disgrace to our past civilisation. Here opportunity on a large scale awaits the executive authorities to turn back their efforts from the circumference to the centre.
The second aspect of the work is not only the largeness of the scale required, but the necessity of relating the work that is to be done to courageous planning, the replanning of the town as a whole. They should contemplate an area so large that the town will be re-formed under the powers of this Bill, contemplate that they will be altering the character of cities and that in altering the character they will alter the general lay-out. In order that that work may be done to the best profit of the future dwellers in those cities it needs to be a replanning for the city as a whole; there should be a conscious idea of how the work to be carried out will fit into the city as it forms. Courage and vision both in the size of the work and in the intelligent planning of the work are the essentials.
Let me turn to one or two main criticisms which have been advanced against the Bill in our discussions. I do not concern myself on this occasion with the minor criticisms or the minor discussions, all of which have been dealt with at one time or another in Committee or in Report. Let me apply myself to the
apprehensions expressed by those whose objects are the same as the Government's—the majority of Members of the House have the same end in view—the abolition of overcrowding, and the reforming of the inconvenient and obsolete areas of our towns. Let me deal with the apprehensions they have lest the Bill should fall short of achieving that purpose. First of all, there is a school of thought which is enthusiastic for the development of garden cities and satellite towns, but fears that this Bill may unduly stress re-development at the centre at the expense of development at the circumference. That is not the purpose nor should that be the effect of the Bill. What is required under the Bill is the plan which is appropriate to the locality, whatever that plan may be, which will provide, in whatever manner is required, for the re-housing of the people—at the centre where houses on central sites are what is needed, which must be the case in regard to a proportion of the people, and round the outskirts for another pro portion of the people. The subsidy is available for the development of undeveloped sites by the provision of cottage buildings as well as for the provision of flats in the re-developed areas, only not in the same automatic form and only where it is justified by the actual circumstances of the case. It is the case that we have upon our Statute Book two housing standards. The standard we are dealing with here is the standard to be applied to the worst type of accommodation, and that is, of necessity, a lower standard than that which we are considering in regard to new accommodation provided under re-housing.
I would like to refer to one particular criticism advanced by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood). He referred to the cessation of procedure by improvement areas. I understand that he regrets we are to dispense with the child of his labours, the Act of 1930. Let me sooth his parental heart by assuring him that the new Bill contains all the powers provided for improvement areas in the Act of 1930, although the actual procedure is not retained. All the powers exist in the new Bill, and the enforcement of them under the old Act would be hopelessly in conflict with the new national standard of accommodation which is established by legislation under the new Bill.
As regards the agricultural areas, with which several Members have dealt, I would say that the application of the Measure to the agricultural areas will undoubtedly require very careful and sympathetic administration. There is a substantial difference in conditions between agricultural areas and urban areas as regards overcrowding. When you are dealing with a great number of dwellings and a great mass of over crowding which you find in the cities, conditions average up, and the arrangements which are made for classes and categories can be made generally applicable because of the large numbers to which you are applying them. Things are different when you are dealing with overcrowding in the rural areas. You do not get the mass of overcrowding in the farms and villages. Their case needs much more particular and individual administration. I think the provisions of the Bill are sufficiently elastic to he applied with as sufficient a measure of elasticity to agricultural areas as to the towns. There can be a large subsidy to deal with the particular circumstances which require such a large reduction of rents as is necessary in the case of the agricultural labourer.
The Bill, if I may put it in that way, ends a phase in our housing legislation. It certainly is not given to any Government, still less to any Minister of Health, to arrive at finality in so continuous a matter of social improvement and endeavour as dealing with the housing standards of our nation. No finality, indeed, can be attained. But I would say that in this Measure we have thrown our hearts over a very high fence. There is recognition for the first time of a standard of accommodation which is being imposed on the nation as a whole. As regards space and air, there is a standard of accommodation which every man, woman and child in the country can expect and which, if they do not receive it, it is the business of the State to see that they do receive it at the earliest opportunity. The State undertakes by the whole force of its housing administration, through Parliament, the Ministry and, the local authorities, to see that in no single case is that standard of accommodation not attained by any family in the country. This is a very great undertaking and I do not think that any country has done it before. I do not think
that any country has had the means to do it—either in resources or in its degree of organisation of the local and central authorities. I doubt whether any country in the world but ours could undertake so high a task. But in undertaking it we must remember that we are setting ourselves a task of exceptional difficulty.
I would make a special appeal, if it be necessary, to the local authorities. I do not think, from their record, that any special spur is necessary. I believe the local authorities to be straining on the leash in order to get to work with the new powers and the new financial re sources of this Bill to improve their local housing condition's. But let me say on this occasion a word that will go out and reach the ears of those who will be concerned in the administration, and responsible for it. In the past we have greatly trusted the local authorities with powers and resources for social services. In the matter of housing in particular we have trusted them greatly, and made them the instrument of the achievement of the whole policy. We have not trusted them in vain—as their effort upon slum clearance shows. They have shown themselves ready and efficient in response to the national call for slum clearance. We are confident that they will be equally ready and equally efficient in their response to the call to deal with the evil of overcrowding. For their encouragement we would say that this Measure is sure of success with active administration on their part—from the standard to the survey, from the survey to the pro vision of accommodation, from the pro vision of accommodation to the transfer of families, all will depend on active administration on the part of the local authorities. As soon as this Measure is passed, there is nothing to prevent local authorities starting straight away on the provision of additional accommodation under the Bill, which will at once make a start in the improvement of conditions.
There is no reason why the provision of actual dwellings should not begin at once. Thus we shall prevent any undue delay or disappointment in the expectations now aroused in the minds and hearts of the people of the country that the end is coming to this evil in their homes. Let us remember that in passing this Bill we are awakening great expectations. We are setting the thought in the minds of families, particularly in the
minds of the fathers and mothers who are living in overcrowded conditions, that the country, through Parliament, has pledged itself to a remedy of the evils under which they now live in the matter of accommodation. We are solemnly undertaking, with the assistance of the local authorities, that these evils shall be remedied with the least possible delay. We know that it can be done. While it is right that we should awaken these expectations because we know and believe that they can be satisfied, it would be wrong, doubly wrong, to awaken them and then disappoint them. Once we have passed the Bill to recognise a national standard of overcrowding and have undertaken to provide accommodation to reduce it, this Government and every Government that succeeds it is absolutely pledged to carry through this Measure. Bypassing this Measure we have done more than merely make an Act of Parliament which can be destroyed by criticism and superseded by other policies; we have brought into existence the most living thing, the most immortal of things in the country, an idea—anidea of social obligation and of the intolerability of a social wrong, the wrong of overcrowding like the wrong of the slums. We have brought that idea to life, and that idea can never die, however many Acts of Parliament it may take to carry it out.

SUPERANNUATION BILL.

As amended (in the Standing Committee) considered.

CLAUSE 9.—(Superannuation of persons transferring from or to local.)

11.17 p.m.

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Duff Cooper): I beg to move, in page 12, line 7,at the end, to insert:
(7) In the application of this Section to Scotland for the definition of local authority 'the following definition shall besubstituted:
'local authority' has the same meaning as in the Local authorities Loans (Scot land) Act, 1891.
This is really a drafting Amendment. The Clause as it stands, would not apply
to the local authorities of Scotland. The object of the Amendment is to remedy that omission.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill to be read the Third time To-morrow.

FINANCE (EXPENSES OF BOARD OF EDUCATION).

Resolution reported,
That, for the purpose of any Act of the present Session relating to finance, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any expenses incurred by the Board of Education in connection with the exemption of educational cinematograph films and other articles from customs duties.

SUPPLY.

Considered in Committee.

[Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]

CIVIL ESTIMATES, SUPPLEMENTARY ESTI MATE, 1935.

CLASS V.

GRANTS TO PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AUTHORITIES (ENGLAND ANDWALES).

Resolved,
That a sum, not exceeding £2,450,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1936, for Grants to Public Assistance Authorities in England and Wales.

GRANTS TO PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AUTHORITIES (SCOTLAND).

Resolved,
That a sum, not exceeding £945,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1936,for Grants to Public Assistance Authorities in Scotland.

Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.

Committee to sit again To-morrow.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

ADJOURNMENT.

Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Sir G. Penny.]

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-one Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.